Here is another example of how even apparently clear memories aren't really that accurate: I almost didn't like this book. I don't know why I remember that I liked God Emperor of Dune, I probably did, but for the sake of me I don't know why. The entire span of the book Leto is whining of how much he sacrificed and his Golden Path, oscillating between total arrogance, self pity and angry fits. Probably part of a good book/bad book cycle, the second and the fourth books of the series felt weaker to me.

Anyway, the plot is not really convoluted, nor does it feature greatly trained people with extraordinary qualities. Instead, most of the characters are mostly ridiculous: a rebel that has nothing but hate and youth to drive her, but somehow Leto allows for her and even likes her for reasons I can't fathom, a Duncan Idaho ghola who acts like a spoiled and angry brat all the time, a bureaucrat that seems to have always in mind the possibility that The Worm could kill him and navigates his life around that, museum Fremen, an army of hysterical women, some remnants of the Bene Gesserit, but not enough to make a difference in that universe and in the course of the book, some Tleilaxu, but acting desperately and illogically and some Ixian machines that seem to be pervasive even when prohibited by that ridiculous Jihad. The rest of the book Leto is lamenting his situation, ponders deep philosophical questions and always wants to be surprised by the people around him, even if he trained, conditioned, bred or even cloned them himself, so he has as few chances as possible. All in the name of avoiding a horrible future when machines hunt and destroy all humans. No, really: Leto II playing John Connor.

Maybe I was more impatient or less likely to open up to the book and so I couldn't empathise with any of the characters, but maybe it was as much a pretentious book as I thought it was. Filled with pompous quotes from the Leto journals and internal dialogues that seemed to have no other purpose but to belittle the other characters in the book, God Emperor of Dune was actually boring to me. There is no question that Frank Herbert writes well, so I will not say I hated the book or that it is a bad one, but compared to others in the series it pretty much stank. I started reading book 5: Heretics of Dune, which started well with Bene Gesserit witches having some devious plans and always assessing one another. I don't seem to remember much of it, which is good, as I start with no expectations.

2022 Reread

  There is no question of the power of the central idea in the book: what would you do if you knew the past and the possible futures and was omnipotent and immortal? Isn't that a god? What would a god do, how would he really feel and think and make decisions? How would you treat humanity if it felt like a curious pet to you?

  I think Herbert had a design in his series of books. He started with an idea, perhaps a popular idea, then deconstructed it and turned it on its head. The first book was almost a classical hero arc with superhumans ruling a feudal universe. The second book revealed the weakness in the hero and the hubris of the superhumans. The third book was also a kind of a hero story where the main character defeats evil and chooses to go transhuman. The fourth book, this one, shows what that actually means. The loneliness, the unavoidable cruelty of total control and power, even when done with the best of intentions. It is humanity who had become the hero and must also change. As the book says, if you must label the absolute, use it's proper name: temporary.

  It is difficult to like this book and impossible to dislike it. The god-like protagonist is pompous, brutal and dismissive, but you have to consider what it is like to be surrounded by inferior beings, stuck in all too obvious patterns yet assuming free will and personal power. On the other hand, he sounds like a villain in movies, you know the one, who pretends to give options to the victim, only to take them away at the last moment. The scale of the book is truly epic, which is why it has many flaws, inconsistencies and even contradictions. But it doesn't matter, because the magic is there.

  I both agree and disagree with myself from 10 years ago. I almost didn't like the book, but I also liked it a lot. The fact that it had this visceral effect on me every time I've read it shows it's a great book. 

  P.S. the discussion in which Idaho is disgusted by two women kissing was hilarious, but even more hilarious was Moneo's admonition, followed by an explanation on how homosexuality is something experienced by young people and then quickly outgrown, if no one feeds it by opposing it. There might be something there, but I imagine how some people will react to it and can't help but chuckle.

Update 23 Oct 2023: Here are the latest files to directly download and use. Do read the rest of the article, as these files might not be what you are looking for:
user.action
user.filter

Update 12 Feb 2016: As an alternative, if you have access to your hosts file, you can use a generated list of domains to immediately block any access to those IPs, courtesy of Steven Black: StevenBlack/hosts, and you don't have to install anything and works on most operating systems.

Now for the rest of the article:

I discovered today a new tool called Privoxy. It is a proxy software that has extra features, like ad blocking and extra privacy. What that means is that you can install the proxy, point your browser to that proxy and have an almost ad free untracked by marketing firms or FaceBook experience. The only problem, though, is that the default filters are not so comprehensive. Would it be great if one could take the most used list for ad blocking (Adblock Plus' Easylist) and convert it to Privoxy? Well it would, only that no one seems to want to do it for Windows. You get a few folks that have created Linux scripts to do the conversion, but they won't work for Windows. Nor do they deem it necessary to make an online tool or a web service or at least publish the resulting files so that we, Windows people, can also use the list!

Well, I intend to do a small script that will allow for this, preferably embedded in this blog post, but until then, I had no script, no files, only Privoxy installed. Luckily, I also have Cygwin installed, which allows me to run a ridiculous flavour of Linux inside Windows. I had to hack the script in order for it to work on Cygwin, but in the end, at last, I managed to make it work. For now, I will publish the resulting files here and give you instructions to install them. When they become obsolete, send me a comment and I will refresh them.

So, the instructions:

• Install Privoxy
• Go to the installation folder of Privoxy and look for files named 'user.action' and 'user.filter'
• Download the user.action file from here and replace the default one.
• Download the user.filter file from here and replace the default one.
• Restart Privoxy
• Of course, then you have to go to your browser settings and set the proxy to Privoxy (usually localhost, port 8118)

Warning! The filter file is quite big and it will cause some performance issues. You might want to use only the action file with the filter actions removed.

Update: If you can't download the files, let me know. I am using Github pages and it seems sometimes it doesn't work as I expected.

Also, I have lost faith that AdBlockPlus rules can be completely and correctly translated to Privoxy and I lack the time, so I am publishing my crappy program as it is and if you want to use it or fix it, be my guest. You can find the program here: AdblockPlus to Privoxy. I would ask that you share with me those modifications, though, so that everybody can benefit from them.

Update October 2023: Other people have contributed by making their own translation software. Here are the links for the binary and source code of adblock2privoxy made by Zubr, in Haskell mind you, which is pretty cool:

Binary: https://www.dropbox.com/s/69u1iqbubzft1yl/adblock2privoxy-1.2.4.rar?dl=0
Source code: https://projects.zubr.me/wiki/adblock2privoxy

The original software is not available anymore, but here is a GitHub fork for the same: https://github.com/essandess/adblock2privoxy

Funny how ad blocking software (notably Adblock Plus) managed to unclutter the web pages we visit by removing most of the advertising, then how web sites and advertisers raged for months against the practice that saves you from bother, but removes them from their profits, and then how web sites increasingly detect ad blockers and try to convince you what you are doing is wrong. The next step is, of course, updating the ad blocking software to detect the notices web sites put on sites to convince you to remove ad blocking and remove them. Then the sites will hide or show content based on whether you have an ad blocker. Then ad blockers will look for hidden content and show it. Then sites will remove the content altogether. Ad blockers will get stealthy. Sites will continuously poll the server to tell it if the ads are present. Ad blockers will hack the scripts polling the server. Sites will add encryption of messages. Ad blockers will decrypt the messages... ... ... 2030, ad blockers achieve self awareness and start nuclear war in order to remove advertisers.

Now, seriously, if you don't have the Adblock Plus extension (for Chrome or Firefox), you are missing out. Unfortunately there is no Internet Explorer version, but I am sure someone will clone it, if the new versions of the Microsoft browser are designed properly.

It is getting close to two years since I've been employed by a large international corporation and I've decided to write a blog entry describing my feelings towards this kind of work. This is not a rant against my employers, mind you, but an attempt to explain to folks what being in a corporation actually means. And the best analogy I could find... is marriage.

Now, while this may seem funny it is also very true, if you ask me. People start their career by looking for a direction, rather than an employer, but they use employment as a tool to find and validate that direction. You may have finished college or university, but it is not clear yet where you would like to work. You still nurture thoughts of starting your own company and selling it for billions. You don't know what exactly you are good for yet. How is that different from when starting your love life? You don't know your "type", you look gratefully to any girl that would look back at you, you still hope you will find that "one true love" that will be pristine, beautiful, smart, good in bed and totally in love with you and your greatest fear is that if you talk to her, all kind of crap is going to spew out because you are not yet sure of yourself, or that in the blessed event you get her to bed, you will suck at it.

With experience comes enlightenment, though. You realize that some companies are not worth working for, that some bosses are just insufferable, that you are actually good at some things and you can pursue a career in that direction (while other directions would be a waste of everybody's time) and that being friends with your employer is nice, but not actually required. You realize you have a "type", a sort of working environment where you would like to work, while making yourself and everybody else happy. You are not working for a large company yet, you are just exploring your options and gaining confidence. "Listen", you say to your boss, "it was a great time working for you, but I need my space. It's not you, it's me. I can do better.". You can do that because you start to know your worth (or at least your minimum worth).

After this period of dating, you start to have longer relationships. You start to like your working place, give your loyalty to it, enjoying when your employers are praised of their product. At this stage, most companies are startups or small branches. Your boss is not far from where you could imagine yourself. Maybe he was a skilled worker too and, after "getting the ropes", he started his own company, thus effectively "graduating" to the next level. It's not so far from the "world as a school" view that many students have. This means if you do something bad, you are likely to get the negative feedback from the clients thrown at you, shouted at, made to feel ashamed for failing "the family". Not different from getting scolded by a parent or big brother or maybe a teacher. When you do something right, your boss might reward you, either by praise or by a bonus. You are also likely to find out what went well. You think of your employer as your peer and you start to get feelings of commitment towards the company, maybe even dream that as you evolve as a worker, you will be more and more appreciated, maybe even become owner, pulling that company up with you.

So, at this stage you think your girlfriend likes you as you like her, that if there is anything wrong she will tell you and that the relationship works great. Great disappointment awaits when you become more and more invested in the relationship and her response is just to smile at you more. At one point you tell her that you need more, time when you face reality and see that she will agree with you and break it off either directly or by remaining indifferent to your efforts. You could, of course, become complacent in this dysfunctional relationship, in which neither will make an effort and the results will be mediocre at best. You will not be happy.

Let's assume that it is over. You took the cold shower, realized that as an employee your role is to do your job and maybe take the blame for the bad things you do. No benevolent employer will come to you, pat you on the back, admit that his company has grown largely because of you and bring you up as a partner. You will become a bit cynical, starting to look less at the interesting work and the smart people and more for objective benefits like salary and working conditions. You still have the passion for what you do, after all, it is the reason you went for this career in the first place: you think you are good at it. You also have a medium large resume that proves it. You may not be your job, but you are your work, still.

This is the moment when the corporation becomes attractive and when they start to want you. The working conditions are great, the money is good, there is a system in place that guarantees quality and that allows you to continuously grow. They will even train you. It's like a new dream, now that the first two (having your own firm or being elevated to partner if you work well) have gone out in smoke. There are people that will pay you more to do the same thing and even support you in becoming better.

Once you go this way, you have a stable place to work, great kitchen, good furniture, console games. You are even allowed to play them if you are doing your job well. Your remuneration is not increasing exponentially anymore, but you have good chances you will get a raise annually, after being reviewed by managers and peers. You hardly hear of any of your clients, unless the entire product line is bad. Occasionally you get whiff of comments from clients that sound wonderful, but just feel fake: lots of "great" and "awesome" for a work you know to be good at best and most likely mediocre. With a corporation the strategy may change at any moment: products abandoned, directions chosen arbitrarily, features appearing out of nowhere. You still remember what it meant to be an important part of a company and so you start suggesting ways of improving the end result, only to be met with condescendent pats on the back. Not only your idea is not very good, it is you who doesn't understand what the company wants. Yes, it would work, but best for you and your colleagues, not for the greater entity. If in a small company your superior was somebody like you, only better or richer or older, now you have people of the same age as you that never did your work and that have completely different sets of values determining what and how you do your job. You really want to please them, but you feel misunderstood and you are incapable of understanding them in return.

You have reached the marriage stage. Your wife looked so good when you first met and she still does, only she walks in loose pyjamas in the house, doesn't smile so much, has completely different habits and a weird value system. Doesn't like what you like, wants you to "compromise" all the time and do things for "the couple". And while you "work on the relationship" the result is boring. You hardly hear her complain, but neither do you say anything, that would be rude, you would hurt her feelings. You read psychology books on how to improve your relationship or how to resolve conflicts without aggression. You do the things that you both like a little instead of doing the things you like a lot. Whenever you feel down, disappointed with your life, you consider all the years you gave to the marriage, the children, the way things might still get better in the future. Maybe it's your fault or you can still fix it somehow.

Just as in a marriage, your company does not pay you for your efforts, but for the fact that any other company would pay the same for a man of your qualities. You don't get to choose the direction of your life, because it is not yours anymore. Your job is to do the things you are told, not less and certainly not more, integrate with the process (maybe with your team, but that's a bonus. Process always beats people in a company), appear pleasant and always consider the consequences of your actions and words. Everybody is polite, even if they fire you or tell you your work sucked. If you somehow get noticed and start a real relationship with your betters you are immediately despised by your peers. You go up in the hierarchy for social reasons. If you are good enough in that, you may join the management track and continually getting raises, bonuses and promotions. Fail to do that and everyone will notice how hard working you are right until the moment they don't need you anymore.

And this is the point when you think "Wow, if I ever get out of this, I will start my own company!" only you spent too much time doing menial work and you lost your edge, you lost contact with any potential clients, you lost contact with your field of work, you got used to the comfort of getting a lot of money on a regular basis. You think "Oh, dear, if I quit this, I will have to go dating again and now I am old and forgot how it is done!". You are not really miserable, you are just not happy. You can live with that.

What do I think? You are not made for a single direction only. You may choose to change it at any time or even walk several at a time. Having chosen a direction, you must never stop. Others keep going forward and will leave you behind. The purpose of money is to allow you to survive. It's for housing, nourishment and maybe a bit of comfort, it is not a "level" you reach, or a unit of your value. Your value is determined by the results of your actions. Shitty actions, shitty value, no matter who's at fault. It's never too late to date, because it is worth finding someone you love, even if you end up marrying her afterwards :-)

Of course, you will all ask me now "Siderite, how come you are not following your own advice? Why do you stay?". There are several reasons. I am a little afraid. There is this economic crisis and no one is actually hiring. There are few startups. If I go somewhere else, I would only be switching one corporation for another. I may also be not "not happy" enough; complacency is in my blood. I certainly have that disgusting habit of watching a movie till the end, even if it is a bad one, just to be able to comment on it in full knowledge. I do feel that I have more things to learn here. Rest assured, though, if I spend too much time considering my options until none remain, you will read it in this blog and know not to follow my example.

The third book in the Dune saga is a strange mix between the first two. It has the epicness of the first, the setting up of the next book like the second and a length that is between the lengths of the previous books. It becomes obvious that Herbert has become too connected to his own characters and he is sometimes talking, so to speak, to himself. Characters say obscure lines that somehow strike a strong emotional or intellectual cord in their interlocutors, giving the impression they are very smart and perceptive, but that's all it is: an impression. There is a strong mix (not to say melange) of behaviors in single characters or of interactions between them that makes no sense at closer examination. If there is a word that would most fit with Children of Dune, it would be "pompous". The characters are wallowing in their hidden powers and arrogantly spewing big words that ultimately mean nothing.

That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the book. I remember when I was younger I was debating if this or the next, not the first, were the best books. Now I believe that it was somehow a rushed release. A little more effort, maybe even with a splitting of the book in two smaller ones with more substance, would have made this a contender for the title. As such, though, it only mirrors the shine and edge of the first Dune book, while being less powerful. How much time did the idea of Dune mature in Herbert's head before he put it on paper and how much time did he have for Children of Dune, under the pressure of fans and publishers?

If something really hurt the consistency of the story it was the larger than life characters introduced at first: the Bene Gesserit legacy of memory and terrible training, the prescient, the Tleilaxu, the indomitable Fremen. Hard to keep the pace with such monsters. What mistakes could one do having the entirety of their ancestors' memory at their disposal? What effect would knowing the future or taking any shape you desire have on you? What would happen to fierce desert warriors when presented with a life in comfort? These are the questions that the book tried to ask, while it couldn't keep up with the immensity of the described universe and characters. Hard to describe specific bits without spoiling the story, but a good example is The Preacher, or the childish fits of anger on people that were supposed to be weathered by hardship, training and past lives.

Now, Frank Herbert is no fool. He not only noticed that the book he wrote is a little too arrogant, he has a plan. The next book will take that arrogance and throw it in our faces like a sin of all humanity that must be punished. I remember the God Emperor of Dune as a fantastic book and I can hardly wait to read it. But I also thought Children of Dune was bigger than life and now I have changed my opinion. We'll see.

Reread at 45

I thought the plot of the book was too convenient, with people who have no connection to one another suddenly making plans that consider all of the others. Also, a great inconsistency between the declared training and ability of some people and their behavior. But maybe that was the point: they are all superhuman, but they are still human. They have extraordinary skill, but also make mistakes. In their greatest moments of despair or triumph, they falter. I don't know.

I am certain that in this book I hated the Fremen, all arrogant and rigid, with their laws and their world view that never changes, all the time heralded as some great examples of humanity. They were psychos! The entire empire was a cesspool of ignorant religious fanatics. While in my youth I considered that annoying, now I found it creepy, maybe right down terrifying, because I can see it happening around me so easily. I do remember that I expected a better end for Alia and that was my impression now, as well. They had prescience, the knowledge of all past generations and a clear solution to the problem, but they just decided it was too late or too complicated to do anything.

This time I got more of the pompous utterances in the book. It didn't seem so empty of meaning anymore. Yet it still is pretty dense and pretentious, with many thing left just unexplained, just happening for the sake of the plot.

I am looking forward to rereading God Emperor of Dune.

I was trying to figure out an issue with our product and, in order to understand what was going on, I copied a class from the project into a small sandbox project to see how it would work. Lo and behold, a problem occurred in one of the utility functions that would have made the entire feature unusable. Yet the feature worked fine, except the little detail I was working on. What was going on?

Let me show you the code first (simplified for your pleasure):

Dim al As New ArrayList
al.Add("A")
al.Add("B")
Dim result as String = String.Join(":", al.ToArray(GetType(String))))

What do you think the result will hold?

In our production site the result was "A:B". In my sandbox project the result was "System.String[]". It took me a little to understand what was going on. You see, the sandbox project was .Net 4.0 while the production site still worked with 3.5. New to .Net 4.0 are overloads for the String.Join method, including one that receives a params array of objects. Since ArrayList.ToArray(Type type) returns Array no matter the type boxed inside, this is the overload that is chosen. The list of strings is taken as the first parameter, stringified, and the result is what you saw.

Conclusion: be very careful of the types you send to methods. Even if Visual Basic automatically casts method parameters, you never know for sure which type it will choose to transform into. And if you want to upgrade a VB project from .Net 2.0-3.5 to 4.0, be careful of the new overloads that have appeared.

Dune Messiah is the second book of Frank Herbert's Dune saga. It is two and a half times smaller than the first book and it feels almost completely different. Paul has been emperor for some time, not much, but enough for his jihad to bring the death of tens of billions. The government of the universe is now his, a combination of religion and bureaucratic despotism that he foresaw, but could not have prevented. The house of Ix and the Bene Tleilaxu make their appearance. There are conspiracies against Muad'dib and his family from every corner and, if the first book was of his victory over his enemies, however painful, the second book is all about his defeat at the hands of the future. He walks the edge, loses almost everything, all in the name of a better future for human kind. All the characters are weaker, more human, some less human but still weak.

All in all, it is a nice book, well written and interesting, but it felt like a kind of bridge between Dune and the next two books, which have their focus on Paul Atreides' children. We are certainly looking forward to brilliant stories and great writing, but Dune Messiah seemed a little too melodramatic, less focused, with less work done on it. Compared to its predecessor, it seems a disappointment; compared to most other books, it is still great.

Reread at 45

  It is amazing to me how each decade these books are telling me something different. I still see the flaws, but they are subtly different, I still see the greatness of it, but also altered by time. Every time I read Dune it changes me, like the spice melange, makes me more introspective and extrospective. I look at things with more depth, I examine myself with more care. I love that feeling and I enjoy myself more.

  One thing remains the same, though: I immediately identify with the Bene Tleilaxu and the House of Ix while reading the book. They are the tinkerers of their time, but without the whole ideology and set in ways behind the Bene Gesserit or the Fremen. Are they evil? Who cares! Therein lies freedom.

Anyway, back to the book. Just like in the first one, there are some important events that happen out of sight and we only hear from them or are explained by the characters. In Dune, the killing of Chani's first child was almost an afterthought. In Dune Messiah we just have to accept that Jessica, the loyal mother of Paul, just decided it's OK to leave Arrakis and move to Caladan, accompanied by Gurney Halleck, no less, the man who hated the Harkonnens with his whole being. Some important characters are summarily executed off screen, too, once they've done their job. I guess that's how the world works at any time, but as a reader, I would have liked more meat on those bones.

My instinct above, where I said it was a bridge between Dune and Children of Dune, was right. Even Brian Herbert wrote about this in his introduction. Many people were let down when they read Messiah, and the general view was that once Paul has become a classic hero, readers were not entertained by his downfall. But I don't think it's that. I think it was the vagueness of the book, the pompous implications of words that did not explain anything. That's both good and bad. Let me explain.

At first read, you feel like you are part of some mystical universe where each moment, each gesture, each word has world shattering implications. Coming from the boring world we feel we live in, it's a revelation. You feel like with just a little more attention to detail, a little more thinking about it, you will also glimpse the path things take. At second read, you are used to the feeling and you kind of know you will not get to the hidden truths of the book, but you still hold hope that a better person could see them, so it's still somehow inspiring. At later reads, you just understand that Herbert intimated secrets that he himself never deemed necessary to invent. You see the inconsistencies, how characters that had complete control of their minds and bodies act like children, or how the universe is ruled absolutely by Paul, with no constitution or legal organisms that are not subservient to him, but then he must obey the Fremen law whenever the plot sees it fit.

For me, this remains a thing of hope. The Dune series is great, but it could have been improved upon. Some writer somewhere will manage to write something similar that would upstage it by the sheer personal effort to be attentive to details and to imagine a world greater than our own.

This has happened to a colleague of mine: when trying to open a solution file with VS 2010 the program would start, it would successfully load the solution, open the few files that were open when last closed, then suddenly restart. No fancy dialog prompting for action, no message of any kind, just a total silent fail. He tried using the /log filename option of Visual Studio to gather more information, it did not help. He tried using the /SafeMode switch to load only the essential bits of Visual Studio, to no avail. The only useful information was in the Windows Application log (run eventvwr.exe in the command line) which pointed to the module cslangsvc.dll failing.

The Windows Application log entry for the crash:
Faulting application name: devenv.exe, version: 10.0.40219.1, time stamp: 0x4d5f2a73
Faulting module name: cslangsvc.dll, version: 10.0.40219.1, time stamp: 0x4d5f3b95
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00249be1
Faulting process id: 0x1af8
Faulting application start time: 0x01ce3c253d1db9e5
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC#\VCSPackages\cslangsvc.dll
Report Id: f3522e88-a818-11e2-a285-14109fd5a416

The bit of the Visual Studio log that is relevant:
<entry>
<record>437</record>
<time>2013/04/18 11:17:35.042</time>
<type>Information</type>
<source>VisualStudio</source>
<description>Unexpected system error mode before loading package [Visual Studio XML Editor Package]</description>
<guid>{87569308-4813-40A0-9CD0-D7A30838CA3F}</guid>
</entry>

At this point, we thought that it was a problem caused by Visual Studio trying to parse the open files, probably related to Intellisense, which means we need to make the solution open ignoring the files open when using it last time. That means deleting the file with the .suo extension associated to the solution.

This is a common issue, as the first Google search item when looking for cslangsvc.dll is this: Visual Studio 2010 Crashing on Solution Load. The thing is the guy does claim he deleted his .suo file and that the problem was still reproducing. There are also some Microsoft Connect items logged (Vs2010 crashes on cslangsvc.dll) that have no resolution.

Well, deleting the .suo file associated with the solution worked. This, of course, removes more than the last opened files, like the source control associations of the solution, various custom options for said solution, etc, but it shouldn't be a problem.

There is a bit of information in the Visual Studio log which points to the XML Editor Package. This means it could be caused by XML files or aspx/ascx files. However, it might not. We did not pursue the issue any further. Hope it helps other people looking for a resolution.

  Dune, a mega-classic of sci-fi books, written in 1965 by the ecology obsessed Frank Herbert, tells the story of a future world that is dependent on the substance known as spice, of a vast stellar empire led by an emperor and the noble houses and shaped by religion. Dune is the first in a series of six books, each one increasing the level of "epicness" of the story. There is no way I can do justice to the book in my review, it is that good and that complex. All I can say is that I've read it every ten years from the time I was 15, and every time I read it, I interpret it differently. This also shows how different we are at various ages.

  Anyway, I was saying that Frank Herbert was obsessed with ecology. I am saying this after having read all of his books a while ago and noticing the pattern. The Dune Wikipedia article claims that this book was the result of events that started Herbert's interest in ecology, while he was working for the Department of Agriculture, trying to stabilize sand dunes using plants. Herbert is also the author of brilliant books like the Pandora series or like Hellstrom's Hive which, for many reasons, I consider masterpieces as well. However most of his books and short novels feature some interest in ecological systems.

  The story is set twenty millennia into the future. As it was written in the sixties, it had to solve the problem of exponential technological advancement that was obvious even then. How can one write a book about the future, when the future moves so fast? Herbert solved it in a simple way: he imagined a world where humans rebelled against the use of intelligent machines, for religious reasons, thus removing computer advancements from the equation. Also, in order to solve the issue of ever evolving weaponry, he imagined a world where energy shields were cheap and small and could be used personally or on buildings or ships; these shields would stop any object or energy moving fast enough. This reduces battles to hand to hand combat, with knives and slow needles that can penetrate the shield. It's not like Herbert had all the answers: there are obvious technological devices that would have rendered this version of a shield useless, as well as clear reasons while perfect control over technology could not have been enforced. But the way he envisioned this future world, where everything important was the human being - as a thinking, feeling, believing creature - made it close to timeless.

Now, the plot is vast and the beauty of the book is in its minutiae, not in the overall story. This has been proven, I think, by the way people have received the 1984 David Lynch film adaptation versus the 2000 version. The first took "poetic license" to change the story and make it more script like, but preserved the feel of the book, with the interior dialogues, the epic scenes and careful attention to minor details. The 2000 adaptation was completely faithful to the book in the way of following it scene by scene, but the lack of attention to punctual details made it unappealing and bland. There is a project called Dune for 2014, maybe that will give us another point of reference. So I will not talk about the plot and let you discover it for yourself. Enough to say that it is a great book.

It is important for me to talk about the difference between my personal interpretation of the book at different ages. When I was 15 I thought it was a glorious story of personal achievement, where Paul Muad'dib and Leto II were becomes gods by the sheer power of their thoughts and feelings. At 25 I thought it was a deep analysis of human interaction, of how logic, emotions and belief clash to mold our beings. And now, at 36, I feel like the book is brilliant, but I can read between the lines, see how the structure of the story was created from various sources; a bit of the mythos has lost its power, but gained more respect. If at 15 I was identifying with Paul and at 25 I was dreaming to become Leto II, now it's easier to me to identify with the likes of Gurney Halleck or even Feyd Rautha Harkonnen. I am not saying that I like them more, I just feel I gained more insight into the other characters. I say it again: Dune is a book of details (without being boring with them).

I cannot end this review without mentioning the Dune video games. I spent many an hour playing the adventure game Dune and many a day playing Dune II, the real time strategy game that was to inspire all others in the future. The game was so primitive that the controls were not designed for ease. Each unit was controlled individually and had very little autonomy, the result being that one rarely had time to blink when many units were constructed. This prompted my father to take me to a mirror and show me my own eyes. They were red and irritated. "Oh", I said, "it's from the spice!".

Review at 45

In between Villeneuve movie adaptations of Dune, it was time for another reread and, amazingly, I got something else out of the book, again! This time I saw through many of the flaws of the book. Small flaws, to be sure, but some contradictory facts like when to unsheathe a crysknife or where the origin of a mind altering substance was and stuff like that.

I also understood why it is so difficult to make an adaptation of the book to movie form. First of all, because the people in the Dune universe are supposed to be superhuman. They remember much, think fast, feel deeply, move fast, after going through harsh training regimens and being subjected to exotic substance, strange rituals and being subject to strong religious and political forces. I can even say now that I think Herbert didn't write well enough to convey what he wanted, as his book is inconsistent in how it portrays the abilities that noble people use at every moment of their existence. Lynch tried to make it work, while all others glossed over it. On paper you are shocked by the way the characters take in the world, observe and analyze minutiae, only to then act with ruthless swiftness. On the screen, you just see normal people in a fantasy world that makes little sense.

The first part of the book is also more consistent that the second. From the moment Paul and Jessica meet the Fremen, everything is done quickly, based on rituals and knowledge that is somehow common to characters from completely different cultures and, when that fails, there are premonitions or instincts that tell them how to act in order to move the story exactly as the author wanted. And failing that, there are always coincidences that help. The Fremen themselves are described in wildly oscillating ways: they are the noble savages, but they also have a very old culture, but they are also violent simpletons that are blindly driven by ritual and implanted religion, but they also have technology, they are honorable, unless they kill stabbing you in the back or in a fit of rage. They are superb fighters, but they are not trained, so Paul can defeat them, but not the super trained Sardaukar. And so on and so on.

At the end, some particular important events are written as happening "off screen", like Herbert wanted to get it over with.

And I understand that, too. The complexity of the story and characters, the careful (superhuman?) effort that must have been necessary to make this work - while writing it on typewriter 70 years ago and also trying to get people from that time to accept it - must have been titanic. Did you know that Dune was the first best seller science fiction novel? Before this book was (repeatedly rejected and only then) published, science fiction was a niche for people to write for themselves and not others.

I am not sure if I will, but I am thinking already to continue to read the entire Dune series of books, not only the mandatory first six, but also those written by Herbert's son - the biography of his father and the collaborations with Kevin J. Anderson.

The last few years have been great for (un)dead people. Vampires have taken over the screens, even werewolves, the ridiculous people that in their greatest moments turn into mangy canines, have had their fair share of screen time and now it's the turn of zombies to have their days. Not that zombies were not done to death, so to speak, the same idea reinvented and rehashed, but basically unchanged. It was only fair that zombies become "mainstream" by appearing in a TV series: The Walking Dead. And they were not even the modern, raging running rabid type of zombie, but the slow and mindless, yet highly infectious kind. But hey, it's about supernatural monsters, a step away from sci-fi, so it is cool, even if it reiterates the same tired story of people that love drama too much and can't help fight each other and getting in the way of the undead when their emotions run high (which must invariably do so, else the characters would he boringly successful in avoiding any danger).

You might think that I am criticising the new zombie uprising because I am the kind of movie critic asshole that thinks everything sucks unless done my way, but it is not so. I have solid evidence that the undead genre can be awesomely innovative and deep in meaning. I give you three examples, all of them European, not because I am some sort of continentalist, but because the American stuff just sucks ass! I've decided to pointedly single out these three TV series and discuss them outside my "TV series I've Been Watching" section, because they prove without a shred of a doubt that TV can be for smart people, they are just not that many of them and it's not feasible economically.

Here it goes:

• The Fades - this British series had dead people that could not go to Heaven turn on the living and becoming zombies, only smart, feeling ones, that just consider death is treating them badly and are lashing out. A brilliant take on the whole undead concept that went unexplored because the series got cancelled after a season. By far the best supernatural TV series of the decade, though!
• In the Flesh - new British show that features actual zombies, the kind that eat on people. Unlike their American counterparts, they place the action of the film after the rise, when the undead are being "treated" and returned to their families. PDS (Partially Deceased Syndrome) sufferers have to deal with the reactions of small town people used to shooting undead on sight and being proud of it. Typical British thing to take a zombie idea and turn it into a deep exploration of social issues.
• Les Revenants - last, but certainly not least, a French series about people coming back from the dead. They just come back, not remembering how they died and not knowing they did. People have different reactions to them and many have noticed the "Twin Peaks" feel of the series. Dark and psychologically violent, as only the French can make them, this is as far from La Horde as In the Flesh is from The Walking Dead. There was also a movie on which this series is based, which in English was translated as "They Came Back".

I highly recommend you watching these series. I don't care what the audiences were. In my view low audience to a movie or TV show can mean only two things: it was really bad, or it was really smart. I believe these three examples fall into the smart category.

There was a web toolbar at the bottom of the blog called Wibyia. Damn if I know where these web startups get their names, but it is as good as any other, I guess. Anyway, the bar stuck at the bottom of any page and offered some tools, addons like chat and who is online, and a welcome message to new users. So here I am, pretty snug about my little blog, when I get an email from Wibyia: upgrade for free to the new version of Wibyia! So I click on it, I log in, Bam! a completely new design (a crappy "social" a brightly colored big and ugly thing), less features, a ridiculous admin interface and no way to revert to the previous functionality. At this point I got mad and removed the bar from the blog. If you somehow found it useful, let me know, I will write my own version.

But this prompted some research on the net on how to host files for the blog and I found that I can use Google Drive (in a rather convoluted way) to store the additional js and css I added on the blog. And so here is the new version of the blog, which should work the same, but hopefully load a little faster due to caching of the 50k js and css files.

Oh! And congratulate me for reaching the beautiful round number of 1024 blog entries today! >:-)

I was trying to solve a problem on this blog, where the opening of links in their own fancy javascript window would fail if the server did not allow opening their pages in frames. The result would be an ugly empty black window and an ugly javascript error in the browser console in the form of Refused to display '[some URL]' in a frame because it set 'X-Frame-Options' to 'SAMEORIGIN'.

So I started looking for a way to detect these pesky URLs. First attempt was using jQuery.Ajax with method 'HEAD', which inquires the HTTP headers only from a given URL. There is no reason I can see to deny access to 'HEAD' requests, but the browser does it anyway based on... HTTP headers! Not to mention that this solution fails for more links than a frame because of Ajax cross-site scripting issues.

Second attempt: use an adhoc hidden iframe to detect if the URL can be opened. This worked, but at a cost that prohibits me using the solution in the blog. I will publicize it, though, maybe it works for other scenarios. It uses jQuery, so you will have to translate it yourself into the raw Javascript version or to make it use your favorite framework.

The code first:

var Result={
    CouldNotLoadUrl:1,
    UrlLoadedButContentCannotBeAccessed:2,
    UrlLoadedContentCanBeAccessed:3
};


function isAvailable(url, callback, timeout) {
    if (!+(timeout)||+(timeout)<0) {
        timeout=5000;
    }
    var timer=setTimeout(function() {
        ifr.remove();
        callback(Result.CouldNotLoadUrl,url);
    },timeout);
    var ifr=$('<iframe></iframe>')
        .hide()
        .appendTo('body');
    ifr.on('load',function() {
        if (timer) clearTimeout(timer);
        var result;
        try {
            var iframe=ifr[0];
            var doc=(iframe.contentWindow||iframe.contentDocument).location.href;
            result=Result.UrlLoadedContentCanBeAccessed;
        } catch(ex) {
            result=Result.UrlLoadedButContentCannotBeAccessed;
            alt=ex;
        }
        ifr.remove();
        callback(result,url,alt);
    });
    ifr.attr('src',url);
}

You use it like this:

isAvailable('https://siderite.dev',function(result,url,alt) {
    switch(result) {
        case Result.CouldNotLoadUrl:
            alert('Could not load '+url+' in an iframe (timeout after '+alt+' milliseconds)');
            break;
        case Result.UrlLoadedButContentCannotBeAccessed:
            alert(url+' loaded in an iframe, but content is innaccessible ('+alt+')');
            break;
        case Result.UrlLoadedContentCanBeAccessed:
            alert(url+' loaded in an iframe and content is accessible');
            break;
    }
},10000);

You will need to have jQuery loaded and to have a html body loaded in the DOM (so if you copy these into an empty html file to test, make sure you add <body></body> before the script or execute isAvailable on the DOM Ready event.

And now the explanation.
First, it is imperative to first append the iframe element to body before binding the load event. That is because jQuery creates the element in a document fragment and this process fires a load event by itself! Then, different browsers act differently. Google Chrome does not fire a load event for an iframe with an URL that has this problem. Internet Explorer does fire the event, but the iframe's content document is not accessible (and this can be caught in a try/catch block). FireFox does fire the event, but only the leaf properties of the content document throw an exception, like the href of the location. In order to fix all of these, I used a timeout for Chrome, to return a false result after a time, then an access to ifr[0].contentDocument.location.href to make it throw an exception in both Internet Explorer and FireFox.

Finally, the reason why I cannot use it on the blog is that it would force the browser of the viewer to load all the URLs completely in the background in order to add a silly click event on the links. I have one more idea in mind, though, and that is to detect the frame loading problem when I open it and in that case to create the content of the iframe manually to contain a link to the URL. I will attempt it sometime soon.

Update: I found a solution that seems reasonable enough. When creating the iframe in which I want to nicely load the page that the link points to, I am not just creating an empty frame, but I also add content: a link that points to the same page. The SAMEORIGIN problem is still there, so the link opens the URL in target="_blank" and has a click handler that closes the dialog 100 milliseconds later. Thus, when changing the frame src, if the content of the frame does not change, the user will have the option to click the link and see the page open in a new tab/window.

I noticed that some links in the blog, for example YouTube links, did not show in the dialog that opens when you just click on the link. That is caused by a security improvement in modern browsers and I've changed the script to open the link normally in another window for the YouTube domains. However, there might still be sites that have this issue and I urge you to tell me about links that do not open in the dialog (aka, a black window that shows nothing) so I can fix the script for those domains as well. As usual, the workaround for this (or for if you don't like the dialog) is to middle click the link and it will open in a new tab.

Update: I've solved the problem, somehow, by filtering the domains (you report) that have the issue and making it so that links leading to them open in a new tab/window. Also, I added a link to the iframe so that if it does not load, you can click on the link and open it in another tab/window. Sorry for the inconvenience so far.

So many new series and I haven't started watching them all and there are more still coming!



Let's start with the already described ones:

• Doctor Who - episode six of the seventh season has just appeared. I will probably watch it tonight.
• Torchwood - no news at all for the fifth season. The only new things about it (for me) is that a Torchood episode has 50 minutes on Starz and 60 on BBC One.
• Criminal Minds - episodes keep piling up, but it never came up as a priority.
• Dexter - season 8 of the series will be the last. It's official. The launch date is June 30, 2013.
• Fringe - Fringe has ended! Finally! The whole observer invasion thing was like a stupid rehash of German occupation movies.
• True Blood - June 16, 2013 is the release date. The trailer seems to imply something epic.
• The Good Wife - the show seems to be oscillating between working and not working, with all the unnecessary complications that add no value to the story. Like a hard drive that develops bad sectors I expect it to fail any time now, even if I still like the series.
• Haven - The third season is over, a fourth was announced. The ending of the third season leaves me with few expectations.
• Falling Skies - season three will start on June 9, 2013. It's one of those that are just good and sci-fi enough to keep watching.
• Southpark - season 17 starts on September 2013. Can't wait.
• The Killing - still on my watch list, haven't started watching it.
• Suits - third season is about to start. It doesn't make much sense, but I like it.
• Breaking Bad - I was saying in the last post that the fifth season has ended. It hasn't! There is still one half left starting July 2013. This will end the show. Maybe then I will watch it all to see what happened. Reading the episode synopsis might work as well.
• Californication - I have demoted Californication to neutral. It feels really tired. The LA back and forth talk doesn't do it for me and there doesn't seem to be any (relevant) action.
• Beavis&Butt-head - It seems the show was quietly axed. I haven't heard anything about it for a long time.
• Homeland - I've seen two seasons of Homeland and it's pretty cool. Season three is announced to start on September 29, 2013. I can't empathise with ANY of the characters, but I like it.
• The Walking Dead - slow walking dead people don't really seem a threat anymore. Instead, psychopathic humans do! Oh, and Lennie James appeared as a recluse madman in the last episode, and the season three finale airs today.
• Game of Thrones - season three premiers tonight. There are many fans of the books and series in my friend circle and I like the show so far. I still feel that it doesn't capture the feel of the books, but then again, maybe it will develop its own.
• Mad Men - season six is to premier on April 7, 2013. I will keep watching it, because it is just great.
• Misfits - the show has been renewed for a fifth season. I will watch it, but I don't have much hopes for it.
• Sherlock - the third season of the series will begin probably late 2013. I liked it, even if a bit too... Moffaty? I really don't want to see more and more people acting like Doctor Who. One is enough.
• Spartacus - Vengeance - I had hopes for this season, but it seems it's just the same thing, with a slave rebellion thrown in. It will probably have a Braveheart ending.
• My Babysitter's a Vampire - No news of a third season, but the show has built a faithful (if childish) fan base. What, they don't sell stuff to children in Canada?
• Continuum - the second season starts on April 21, 2013. Sci-fi cop show? Have to watch it.:)
• Copper - the second season of this cop drama starts late 2013. I liked the show and the characters.
• Longmire - still now date for the second season, but I liked the characters and the setting. The script is well written, too.
• The Newsroom - my wife loves this. I will watch the second season, but I can't decide if I like it or not.
• Arrow - I still watch this, as a superhero show with beautiful actors.
• Beauty and the Beast - removed from my viewing list.
• Battlestar Galactica - Blood and Chrome - there will not be more. It was a series of webisodes that were part of a pilot that no one bought. I really liked it, though.
• Elementary - watching it, but it's not great.
• Hatfields and McCoys - This American Civil War miniseries was filmed in Romania and stars Kevin Costner. I really wanted to see it, but didn't get around to it, yet.
• Hit and Miss - A new show I really know nothing about. Six episodes so far.
• Hunted - Cinemax still negotiating a second season without BBC support. Boo, BBC! Anyway, hopes are waning.
• Parade's End - another miniseries. The trailer looks really promising and I haven't read the book. As soon as I watch it you will know.
• Primeval - New World - I really tried to like this show, but I didn't. I removed it from my viewing list.
• Restless - a miniseries. A young woman finds out that her mother worked as a spy for the British Secret Service during World War II and has been on the run ever since. The synopsis sounds interesting. Two episodes so far, that I have yet to watch.
• Ripper Street - It's a bit like doctor Watson working for Lestrade, but I like the characters and the setting.
• The Fear - A Brighton crime boss turns entrepreneur and then he goes crazy. Like mentally ill crazy. I haven't started watching this miniseries, but it might be interesting.
• Vegas - It seems that to keep audiences happy, unreasonable dramas and conspiracies must be presented. Again I feel cheated, as I really like the show but I already see how the mass production version of the script looms its ugly head.
• Wizards versus Aliens - there will be a second season, starting late 2013. I don't know if I will still watch it, but it's childish fun.

And now for novelties

• Banshee - for a show I almost decided I did not like, it seems crazy that I watched all episodes so far. The basic premise is that a recently released inmate assumes the identity of a cop in a small town, where he has to battle local thugs, Serbian mobsters and the town's crime lord. The characters are just fun enough to enjoy, even if the story is totally implausible.
• Bates Motel - A TV series based on Psycho. Haven't started watching the two episodes that aired so far.
• Black Mirror - the second season of Black Mirror is here! Didn't watch it, yet, but probably will. There are three one hour British sci-fi stories with a moral per season.
• Borealis - Weird pilot about a future where nations battle control over Arctic resources in a very covert way. The result, a frontier town Western set in the future, didn't convince anyone and therefore did not materialize into a series.
• Broadchurch - Another small town cop thing? At least it is British, with David Tennant playing the main character (and cannibalizing some other former Doctor Who actors. It seems to have good production values, as well.
• Cracked - Another Canadian cop production. Cracked follows the newly formed Psych Crimes Unit within a Canadian police department set up by a psychiatrist in partnership with the police.
• Cult - the series centers on a journalist blogger and a production assistant, who investigate a series of mysterious disappearances that are linked to a popular television series named Cult. The bad guy is T-bag from Prison Break.
• Do No Harm - A horrible attempt at a TV series, it features a surgeon that secretly has a split personality. A Jekyll and Hyde thing? No. Just a bad show. I removed it from my viewing list.
• Girls - this is not a new show per se, but one I didn't watch until recently. It sounded like a smart Sex and the City, so I got around to check it out. It stars an incredibly ugly, stupid and self centred girl and three of her friends. One of them is really hot, but it couldn't save the show. Weird and ugly people that attempt to appear interesting. They are not.
• Golden Boy - The series follows the successful, meteoric rise — from age 26 to 34 — of Walter Clark, an ambitious cop who becomes the youngest Police Commissioner in New York City history.So, yeah, a police drama again, but it seems more than the usual crap. We'll see.
• House of Cards - I almost added a "want" status to this new series on the basis of Kevin Spacey being the lead actor alone. It is an adaptation of a previous BBC miniseries of the same name which is based on the novel by Michael Dobbs. This also lends support to the theory that the show is good. People that started watching it liked it, as well. So, all I need is to start watching it.
• In the Flesh - Another zombie TV series! And it's British! What's even funnier is that the main character is a rehabilitated zombie Partially Deceased Syndrome sufferer. I didn't yet got "the bug" for it, but it might become a "want". I have watched two episodes so far.
• Labyrinth - I don't know what to say about this show yet. John Hurt stars in it, it seems to involve a connection with the long lost Christian sect of Cathar and is a darma fantasy. People seem to like it well.
• Mayday - the story of a missing May Queen teenager in a small English country village and the dirty secrets this brings up from the depths of its inhabitants. It's a British miniseries, but the viewer response has not been positive.
• Metal Hurlant Chronicles - This is a low budget European sci-fi series based on the comic books with the same title. Only five episodes and probably there will not be a second season, but it was fun enough.
• Monday Mornings - In the last post I was saying that I was in the mood for a good medical drama. This is it so far. Not so much medical, as ethical, though. The story revolves around the weekly meetings of all the surgeons in a prestigious hospital to discuss medical incidents. I like the actors and so far it has been a pretty solid story. A bit too melodramatic, but for an American medical drama, it's good.
• Monsters vs. Aliens - this is a kiddie animation show based on the movie with the same name. After a mere 20 seconds of loud colourful characters smiling and talking maniacally, I stopped and deleted the file. Will not ever watch this.
• Motive - Motive is a Canadian police procedural drama following working-class single-mom Detective Flynn (Lehman) in her investigation of crimes. Each episode also reveals the killers and victims at the start of the show, unusual in police procedural dramas. Haven't watched it yet.
• Orphan Black - The first episode aired yesterday. It's a sci-fi drama, something to do with clones. I hope it will be good.
• Privates - BBC One drama television series set in 1960 which follows the stories of eight privates who are part of the last intake of National Service, and their relationships with their officers and non-commissioned officers, civilian staff and families. Didn't start watching it, yet.
• Red Widow - a housewife from Northern California whose husband, a figure in organized crime, was killed. She has to continue his work to protect her family. Don't know how good it is yet.
• Rome - only two seasons in all, but it told a story from start to finish from the perspective of two friends, soldiers in the Roman legions. Great production values, great acting, loved the actors. At the end, even if it was a great show, I didn't feel like I was hooked and needed more, which is rare with TV series.
• Scandal - an American political thriller television series created by Shonda Rhimes, of Grey's Anatomy fame. I fear the moment when I will present this to my wife and she might like it.
• Seed - A comedy about a guy that donates sperm and finds himself cornered by the resulting offspring. Started badly, was clearly a cliché from the start.
• The Americans - Set during the Cold War period in the 1980s, The Americans is the story of Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, two Soviet KGB officers posing as American citizens and a married couple. Another show waiting for my attention, but it stars Keri Russell, who I love, so I will probably watch it at some time.
• The Blue Rose - a New Zealand crime drama television series about some lowly clerks who join forces to fight the corporate corruption that caused the death of one of their colleagues.
• The Carrie Diaries - Wow! A TV shows based on King's horror story! Nope. It's the TV version of Sex and the City, with a teenage Carrie... the horror, the horror...
• The Doctor Blake Mysteries - an Australian television series. Doctor Lucien Blake returns home to Ballarat in 1959 to take over his deceased father's general medical practice after an absence of 30 years. Doctor Blake is a keeper of secrets and a solver of mysteries. No data on the quality of the show yet.
• The Following - a series about a psychopath obsessed with Poe's writings that creates a cult following of wannabe serial killers. Interesting premise and it stars Kevin Bacon, but it might fizzle.
• Twisted - A teen with a troubled past reconnects with his two female best friends from childhood. He becomes the prime suspect when a fellow student is surprisingly found dead in her home. Didn't start watching it, but it doesn't sound great.
• Utopia - a British conspiracy thriller that follows a small group of people who find themselves in possession of the manuscript sequel of a cult graphic novel called "The Utopia Experiments" which is rumoured to have predicted the worst disasters of the last century. This leads them to be targeted by an organisation known as 'The Network', which they must avoid to survive. Sounds interesting and has a high IMDb rating.
• Vikings - a Canadian-Irish historical drama television series, inspired by the epic sagas about the raiding, trading, and exploring Norsemen of early medieval Scandinavia. It follows the exploits of the legendary Viking chieftain Ragnar Lodbrok and his crew and family. Sounds cool, but I didn't look at it, yet.
• Wallander - I liked this British adaptation of a Swedish police drama. It stars Kenneth Branagh and is still placed in Sweden, even if spoken in English. It is as much a classical police inspector centred series as one can be, straightforward three seasons of three episodes each. Now, I can't say it was great, but me and the wife watched all nine episodes in about a week.
• Star Wars - The Clone Wars (animated series) - I can't really give this a bad rating. If the show is made for children, then it's not really that awful: count Duqu and his Syth lords are being mischievous and evil, while Master Yoda and his Jedi are always kind and good. But that is what makes the show an awful experience for anyone over the age of 12. If you think about it, the movies were not that different from this, but they showed real intrigue, violence, tough choices, even grey characters like Darth Vader. While this show lasted for five seasons, there were only a few moments when they tried to show the evolution of Anakin Skywalker from a Jedi knight to a servant of the Syth, while the technology and thinking in this series was antiquated and childish. That made me stop after a season or so, I watched the last episode of the third season, didn't see an improvement and now it has been announced that the fifth season will be the last.

This book (complete title: Wired for Love - How Understanding Your Partner's Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure Relationship) is a layman's terms summarizing of research done in the area of romantic relationships. Stan Tatkin is not the greatest psychologist ever, but he does a good job in writing this reference book. He lists ten principles that would help people retain their relationship and improve on it. Simple things like making eye contact, hugging till the other relaxes in your arms and fighting smart - for the couple, not against your partner, can make huge impact with little effort. Tatkin suggests that we are all untrained in this relationship crap and so he goes towards making a sort of abridged manual in how to proceed.

Now that I've said all those nice things about him, Tatkin is clearly not God in all matters relationshippy. He admits that the reason why he started the research was the fact that he went through a divorce. That must be especially jarring for a psychologist. Wasn't he supposed to know about people? What happened? He then proceeds fast pace to categorize people and tell them which parts of the brain and which bits of education made them like that and what to do in order to get to the "good" category. I particularly disliked that he branded people into three categories, then was obviously biased towards only one. That doesn't mean he is wrong and certainly when going for simple straight results you just have to put caution aside and go all in. But that's just it: this book is not THE solution, it's just a solution, one that felt right to Stan Tatkin, and so you must take it with a grain of salt.

The basic ideas of the book start from brain structure. We have parts of the brain that are wired for war, what he calls primitives, like the amygdala, who is responsible for the fast reactions that keep us alive. When we get into fights, for example, the amygdala gets excited and furiously fires neurons that prepare your body for a physical conflict. At this time other parts of the brain are more suited to assess the situation and define danger and behavior, parts he calls ambassadors, like the hippocampus. If we are too focused on our basic emotions, we start arguing and hurting the other in order for us, the individual, to come up top in the battle and miss important cues on how our partner feels and what are the correct measures to make the couple get through the situation. Tatkin makes the simple case that as long as we go through episodes where we fight for us and against our partners, this hurts, obviously, the relationship. The thing we should strive towards is the "couple bubble" (I know, terrible name) where both parties can feel protected and safe together with the other significant.

The author splits people into three categories. There is the island, which in childhood was not engaged by their parents, not hugged enough, they did not feel protected. They come out as individualists valuing their personal space and sensible to any close or intimate contact. They believe that as long as two people are self reliant and have a good life, they can have a good relationship without actually needing each other, only enjoying the company. There is the anchor, someone who was loved and engaged during childhood, with lots of attention and careful interaction with caregivers. They are balanced in their emotions, easily empathize with others and form natural couple bubbles, are fond of affection and close personal contact. And there are the waves, who oscillate between the two, alternatively needing affection and intimacy, only to run away when they receive it, for fear of being rejected or abandoned. From all three categories, the anchor is "the way", while the others something our childhood regretfully forced us to be. Thankfully, treating our partner right and being treated right back can change our affiliation.

Needless to say, I don't wholly agree with the guy. The categories feel arbitrary and unidimensional. Of course that restricting your metric restricts your vision of the world, but at the same time one can take this book as an advocate for a specific system. It is the job of others to find and validate others. This is what worked for Tatkin and so he shares it with the reader.

Here are the ten guiding principles of the book. For details, read the book. It's pretty short.

1. Creating a couple bubble allows partners to keep each other safe and secure
2. Partners can make love and avoid war when their primitives are put to ease
3. Partners relate to one another primarily as anchors, islands or waves
4. Partners who are experts on one another know how to please and soothe each other
5. Partners with busy lives should create and use bedtime and morning rituals, as well as reunion rituals
6. Partners should serve as the primary go-to people for one another
7. Partners should prevent each other from being a third wheel when relating to outsiders
8. Partners who want to stay together must learn to fight well
9. Partners can rekindle their love at any time through eye contact
10. Partners can minimize each other's stress and optimize each other's health

Conclusion: A book that can open eyes. One must be careful not to close them in other directions or look only this way. As I said earlier, it seemed as a theory based on a single dimension, the need to feel safe, with little bleedthrough in other areas. Some of the things in the book are so easy to do that not trying them to see if they work would be a shame. Also, whenever something feels too obvious, try to remember when (and if) you actually rationalized this before. Sometimes obvious things need to be said.