Infected is a typical American sci-fi book, including small town mentality, a sports and US centric view, lots of government agencies, all working for the good of the citizens, keeping them all safe and ignorant and the warped morality that tells people they should destroy before they understand, just because they fear it.

That is something to be expected from an American author, though, and the book itself is not bad. It felt like it was inspired a lot by Stephen King's Dreamcatcher, which featured a similar personal dillema of alien infestation while the gov'ment was on the chase, but that one had more oompf. Of course, you can't compare aspiring Sigler to King, but then again, King's writing was never so great to me to begin with.

What I found really astounding is that a civilisation that uses biological machines to create a beach head on another planet would be so easily thwarted by a college athlete, a trigger happy black ops CIA agent and about a doctor and a half. Oh, and some Apache helicopters. What bothered me to no end is that I also felt this was a plausible scenario. I hope I am just stupidly influenced by similar literature, but would it really help to destroy the enemy before you get to at least understand it? What about the technology that was so easily recognisable as foreign and above Earth's current scientific level?

As a conclusion to both book and my own feelings: it was a nice read; not spectacular, but good enough to keep reading till the end. It is also available in podcast format and I myself have read it from a text file saved from a PDF that was gracefully provided free of charge by mr Sigler on the Escapepod podcast site.

Coma is one of my favourite bands if not THE favourite. They are Romanians, I know them, they're cool guys. Recently they organised an unpluggish concert called Coma Light. This is one of the songs there, although I do encourage you to look at them all (YouTube links gracefully provided by Imig/Smallex under the video). Great job, guys! Most of the songs you played deserve an album of their own. Here is the video for Culori, high quality from MetalHead TV. from YouTube.



Links to all the songs in the concert:
Stai
Mai presus de cuvinte
Bizz
Culori
In mine in soapta
Hectic
Un loc sa ajung
Daddy
Morphine
Coboara-ma-n rai
Cine iubeste si lasa
Canta-mi povestea

This is a little YouTube video that shows a photoshoot of Angelina Jolie's when she was a teen. As you will see, she is a lovely looking girl, but that is not the reason I am posting this in my blog. The reason is the feeling that I am having watching this: dread. Here is a 16 years old girl, faking all the emotions in all the pictures that are made of her, with an ice cool professionalism, chewing gum when the film is being changed in the camera. You can imagine what kind of pictures will result from this shoot, when all of this is probably filmed in a small humid room with people watching TV at its more stupidest. Can you imagine trying to concentrate with that noise around? If you ever thought Angelina got to where she is because of her looks only, think again. This little human robot has good programming.

No, you are not mistaken, the voice for this band is Juliette Lewis herself, a pretty known actress that usually interprets beautifully screwed up characters. No wonder her music is similar :) But when I first heard of the band I didn't even bother to listen to them. Not another acting celebrity trying to sing! But when I found out the vocal on Prodigy's Spitfire and Hot Ride songs was Juliette Lewis, I changed my mind. And I am glad I did. Here is the weird and nicely sung Hot Kiss.



Licks:
MySpace page for Juliette & the Licks
Wikipedia entry
Juliette & the Licks fan site

Don't go all "Oh no, not another Beowulf remake!" on me. This is a book that was written in 1971 by John Gardner, presenting the story of Beowulf through the eyes of Grendel. But it is not really the same story, just uses it as a scaffold for the philosophical ideas that he wanted to expose.


Structured into 12 chapters - each for a year in Grendel's life, each for a description of a philosophical current, each for an astrological sign - the book is not an easy one to understand, albeit pretty short. The language is modern and the wording is clear, but the underlying ideas need time and brain power to process, so don't read it in short bursts when you feel bored. Give it what it needs.

In the book, Grendel is not an animal monster, a thing with no thinking, quite the opposite. He is intelligent, articulate, philosophical, all these qualities being given to him at birth, not as a merit to anyone. He is hopelessly depressed and malevolent. He sees life and existence as meaningless, all the Universe a hollow illusion, a thing set to hurt him, set him apart, mock him. It is really easy to identify with him and to feel his feelings, while in the same time despise what he does and why he does it. Grendel is the part of us which we hate and which hates itself.

Enough, though, the book has bad parts as well. The occasional poem lyrics are meaningless in this book. The ending is confused and confusing. I would have liked a clearer ending, that's for sure. And also, it is hard to understand the book without at least knowing the Beowulf story and researching a bit from the Wikipedia article to find out what are the philosophical references hidden in each chapter. But then again, it was never a simple book, and the research (even if I haven't found time to do it) is worth it.

There was an animation film made in Australia in 1981 and featuring Peter Ustinov called Grendel Grendel Grendel which was based on the book, although I haven't been able to get my hands on it. It was partly musical as well, as expected in such a period, ugh!

If you are interested in finding out more about the meanings in the book and discussing about it, here is a link: The Grendel Board.

A while ago there was this site called Pandora (similar to lastFM, but better) that tried to match songs based on their internal structure not user preference. By choosing which songs you liked or you didn't like it would guess your preferences and try to play only songs you would listen to.

Apparently Winamp has a little known (or blogged) addin that does this. It is called the Nullsoft Playlist Generator and comes bundled with WinAmp. This is how you use it:

1. Open Winamp and go to Media Library
2. Create a playlist (or more) and add all your songs there
3. Right click on the playlist and select Send To: Add to Local Media
4. Go to Options, Preferences, Plug-ins, Media Library and click on Nullsoft Playlist Generator
5. Click on Configure selected plug-in, select your options and click Scan. I recommend the background scanning option.
6. After the scan is complete (or during it) you can right click on any song and select "Play similar song to..." and you will listen to songs that this software thinks are similar

That's it. The analysis is pretty superficial, but still better than nothing. It is perfect when you have gigs of songs and you don't want to browse forever, selecting which one you want or you don't want.

I am obsessed by this song, I am just listening to it again and again, typing at hyperspeed while I am doing it (I wish I would type meaningful things, too :) ). The video itself is from Smack My Bitch Up, but YouTube again blocked a cool clip so I had to take another from some other place. I couldn't find the original video for the song. (One that wasn't a fan made anime clip :-|)

Update: even worse, all video platforms other than Youtube have been sued out of existence and even on YouTube the only versions of this song you find are live concerts. It's amazing: a beloved video of a famous song just vanished off the Internet... If you find it somewhere, please let me know. Meanwhile, this is a remix version...



Usage: Pump up the volume and get in front of a keyboard on monday morning. :)

Finally, another book finished. It is not that I am illiterate, really, but lately I have been listening to podcasts every single free minute. I even fall asleep like that sometimes.

Anyway, this book is rather well written and gives some interesting insights into the Microsoft "puzzle" hiring interviews, revealing as well the highly competitive culture behind the system, as well as the most obvious flaws. One of the most famous such puzzles is in the very title of the book. The interviewer would ask one how would they move mount Fuji. The expected answer is a detailed analysis of the process and the more situations and data the candidate thinks of, the better. Of course, there are really stupid puzzles as well, used only to assess how the prospective employee reacts under stress. Others are deceptively simple, but hard to guess.

I will give you one. Please think about it as long as it takes to be CERTAIN the response is right. In fact, I won't even give you the answer. Here it goes:

You have four cards on the table. Each card has a digit on a side and a capital letter on the other. As placed on the table you see the cards like this:

The request of the puzzle is this: what cards must be turned in order to verify that the four cards on the table verify the rule "Every card with a vowel has an even number on the other side". You need to give the exact cards not the number of cards and (of course) turn only the ones that you need, so as little card turning as possible.

Long time since I posted a song on the blog. This is one old, but good song AND video. Rarely you find a truly good combination of sound and presentation nowadays. Quoting from the Wikipedia article for this song: Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke wrote the song about a narcissistic friend of his, which on closer inspection is showcased by the imagery in the lyrics - a parallel to earlier My Iron Lung EP track "Lewis [Mistreated]". He also says that it was somewhat of a competition between him and Jonny Greenwood to see who could fit the most chords into a song. "Just" is especially notable for Greenwood's guitar solo, which showcases some of his first uses of the Digitech Whammy Pedal. The guitar work in the song has been seen as an homage to post-punk band Magazine, one of Radiohead's key influences at the time.



The video reminds me of an old sci-fi story I've read about a word that, when heard by a person, would transform them into a purple jelly cone, including the one saying it. When someone finally understood and accepted the reality of it, it all turned into a race to stop a deaf person going to a radio station and speaking the word. He was immune, you see. Anyway, enjoy.

Science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke is one of the people that has defined me as a person and who's books provided both comfort and excitement during my childhood and adolescence. He is mostly known for the movie adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey although I liked the Rama series more. He also invented the concept of a geo synchronous satellite. 
He has lived a full life and I don't believe in artificially prolonging living above a certain threshold (he was suffering for 13 years now), so I am just happy to have known about him rather than sad for his death.

More details at this BBC News article and this Wikipedia entry.

Ok, I will make a quick list and description. The rest is up to you.

• Stargate Atlantis - the spinoff series of Stargate SG1 has ended its 4Th season, but a 5Th is under way. I am watching it mechanically now, as the quality and originality of the show has decreased in time to the point of negative values
  


• Battlestar Galactica - another sci-fi show, it reinvented completely the story of the old 70's BattleStar Galactica. It started great, but the third season ended in some weird pseudo spiritual mambo jumbo. Hopefully, the fourth season due in April will not suffer from the 'Lost' disease
  


• Doctor Who - British sci fi, a bit goofy, but fun nonetheless. It is about an alien that travels space and time with his human female companions (nothing kinky though ;) )
  


• Eureka - silly sci-fi show about an American town that is populated only with brilliant scientists. Very far fetched, but nice as a light comedy. I haven't been able to finish season 2 that finished airing. I think there will be a season 3 as well.
  


• Regenesis - a bit hard to catalogue, this Canadian sci-fi depicts a multinational scientific group with no political associations trying to fight the medical national emergencies in the world. All kinds of diseases and wacky characters, but a bit failing in the field of science. Season 4 is ongoing.
  


• Jericho - now this is a series that was almost cancelled, then brought back at popular demand. Twelve American cities have been blown to smithereens by carefully planted nukes. The US quickly destroyed Iran and North Korea, but it seems the actual perpetrators are American. A small town in the US has to fight off both corporate conspiracies, the newly formed American government and the bands of bandits and neighbouring towns that want what Jericho has: a fan base :).
  


• Numb3rs - oh, what a waste. It started so beautifully as a mathematician applying math to help his FBI agent brother. By season 3 it got completely unscientific, season 4 lost math completely and turned into yet another cop show.
  


• Lost - I am not watching this anymore, only my wife does. I stopped watching this crap after the first season. Meanwhile they use the same psychological system to carry on a story that makes no sense and that everybody watches for the sole purpose of seeing it end. Like a modern day 1001 Arabian nights played on the audience. The only worth watching part of Lost is the pilot episode, then you should continue the story in your own way.
  


• Grey's Anatomy - medical/soap opera. My wife watches it. It started a bit interesting, but ended up crappy. Almost no medicine anymore, instead you see the personal issues of various medical staff people.
  


• Private Practice - as if Grey's Anatomy was not enough, they made a spinoff out of it. I don't know if it will ever air again, though, with the writer strike and all.
  


• Ugly Betty - it proved a commercial success in Latin America, so the TV corporations cloned it for the US market. A gayified version of the South American show, it is basically a women magazine made TV series.
  


• Prison Break - interesting beginning. I recommend the first season, then it all got 'Lost', with psychological effect to keep the audience interested, an escalation of tension, a complete disaster of a plot.
  


• House MD - this one lasted a bit longer before turning to shit. It is a medical show that depicts a wacky, but brilliant diagnostician trying to figure out what the disease and cure is before the sick expires. It has become repetitive and self-satirical, moving away from medicine and back on the ugly and not interesting ploy of human relationships, but then it got back on track. Still worth watching, although the quality is dropping and the story grows old.
  


• Criminal Minds - TV cop show with a team of FBI agents trying to find criminals by using behavioural analysis. Interesting enough, although, as you can imagine, not very technical.
  


• Sarah Connor Chronicles - [chuckle] Terminator is not a teenage girl. She protects John Connor and his mother from other Terminators that roam freely in the past, yet keep a low profile for some reason or another. It's not terrible.
  


• South Park - delicious animated gross comedy, making fun of everything and everybody. They lost the way around season 10, when the authors seemed buried in scandals and full of rage, unable to make fun of things, starting to instead vent frustration in the show. I am happy to see they have recovered in season 11 and season 12 has just started.
  


• Dexter - a serial killer hunts serial killers. This makes him good, somehow, but he is still a killer. Funny enough his cop father taught him how to hide from the police, his sister doesn't know and she is a cop, too, and a colleague of Dexter, who is a criminal forensic in the police department.
  


• Big Love - this is like a family in distress kind of show, but this time the family is made of one husband, 3 wives and numerous children I've lost count of. Yes, they are Mormons and they must navigate the perils of hiding their religion and marital arrangements from the rest of the world, while managing to obey or wriggle around the organisational structure of the Mormons in their community. As much a fascinating subject as this is, the show is pretty ordinary. Tom Hanks is an executive producer.

That's about it.

While in search for interesting and high quality podcasts I've stumbled upon escapepod.org, a site that offers free sci-fi stories in audio format. They last about 40 minutes, so just about the time it takes me to get from my home to work and they are great in both content and narration quality. It completely takes care of my needs when I get back home and I don't feel like listening to some tech podcast.

Even more, it seems that they post two or three books a week, so you won't finish the site right away. Great job, guys! A site truly after my own heart: exactly what you need, how you need it and with no annoying ads or marketing ploys.

Well, imagine a lonely boy, without a family, learning magic in a special school and who's archenemy is a powerful yet evil wizard. He is always accompanied by his friends, a boy and a girl. The evil wizard likes snakes and manages to kill the headmaster of the magic school. No, it's not Harry Potter, it's Naruto!

It's like the Japanese liked Harry Potter, but thought they can do one better. They're not exactly magicians, but ninjas; Naruto Uzumaki, the main character, is a mix of both Harry and Ron, while boy number two, Sasuke Uchiha, is more like a small Snape. With a bit of a stretch, one could take the Naruto story and rip it off in a prequel to Harry Potter, with the parents as the characters :)

Anyway, long story short: the anime is children oriented, with all kind of soapy feelings, camaraderie and friendships, no gore, little blood, a bit of death, but "censored" where violence or tension is concerned. If you ignore the ridiculous simplicity of the characters, the story is pretty captivating and the "ninja science" fun. It more than makes up in quantity what it misses in quality. The first anime, Naruto, is concerned with the childhood of the characters and spans 220 episodes, while the ongoing Naruto: Shippūden with the adolescence and it is close to 50 episodes so far. There are 20 minutes episodes, if you count the 1.5 minutes presentation in, but don't worry, the fights last well into fourth episodes >:). Also, there are currently 4 Naruto movies: 3 for the first series and 1 for Shippūden.

Basically, if you cross Inuyasha with Harry Potter you get Naruto. I guess that any media industry, once it reaches a level of maturity, makes compromises in order to satisfy the greater audience. What Hollywood did for the US, the anime companies are doing for Japan, but in the end, the result is the same: dumbed down versions of what it could be.

Fortunately, animes are often based on manga publications and you can read Naruto well over the story arch in the anime, freely online.

Links:
Naruto Wikipedia
Naruto Manga Online
Naruto meets Harry Potter video

You thought the World Sucks series had ended? No, it is just in the process of gathering data for cool new posts! This one is about moronic shows on children TV! Do their parents know what "children-centric" stuff their kids watch?

First of all I must explain what "manele" is. It is a kind of music with Arabic and Romanian folk music influences that has become a symbol of a type of Romanian urban subculture inspired from tribalism. You know the type, they are never original: members call themselves a family, they call each other brother, they dress and behave in a "manly" fashion, with speech inflexions that are supposed to show how tough and superior they are. It's like the US "African-American" street culture and in many ways it is a local clone of it.

Ok, now for the actual topic of this post. Yesterday I was watching TV (why, you ask? because I haven't bought yet the second computer and my wife commandeered the only one) and I was given the ultimate proof that it makes people dumb. It was a children TV show that involved teenagers from our own time having superpowers in some mystical realm.

So far so good, but then I noticed how their super powers came from a cell phone! To invoke the magical mana they actually typed some number on the phone pad. Then they transformed into colored knights that were heavily inspired from Japanese shows of the same persuasion, basically a guy in a colourful spandex suit and a motorcycle helmet with a silly sword in hand. The colors of the knights were a bright green, a bright cyan, pink, bright magenta, red and yellow! But what shocked me the most was that they spoke in "manele" style, calling each other "brother" and basically street talk! When they actually combined into a big mechanical knight on a big mechanical flying dragon and fought against what looked like a monster hydra with special effects from the old Japanese Godzilla versus [enter stupid monster name here] movies I was laughing my ass off.

No, really, I am not kidding! This was on TV, on a children's channel! Yeah, bro, that's coo'! Gimme five (gay porn looking knights that "couple" with each other to form a really stupid looking toy like fighting machine)! TV sucks, that was obvious, but to actually show this kind of scatological aberration is even beyond my pessimistic expectations.

In my own quest to find interesting books that would help me understand my place as a software developer I've stumbled upon Dreaming in Code, something I knew nothing about other than it featured the word "code" in the title. It had to be good!

In the end the book surpassed my expectations by describing software from a totally different point of view than the programming books I am used to. Dreaming in Code is not a technical book. It can be read by software developers and bored housewives alike. It features a kind and professional tone and the three years of documenting the book can only help put the whole story in perspective.

The storyline is simple: a software visionary decides to start a new project, one that would be open source, innovative and revolutionary and also a replacement for slumbering Outlook and Exchange type of software. Scott Rosenberg documents the development process, trying to figure out the answer to the decades long question: why is software hard? What starts very ambitious, with no financial or time contraints, ends up taking more than three years to get to a reasonable 0.6 release, time when the book ends. The project is still ongoing. They make a lot of mistakes and change their design a lot, but they keep at it, trying to learn from errors and adapt to a constantly changing world.

For me that is both a source of inspiration and concern. If Americans with a long history of software spend millions of dollars and years to create a software that might just as well not work, what chance do I stand trying to figure out the same questions? On the other hand the spirit of the team is inspirational, they look like a bunch of heroes battling the boring and pointless world of software development I am used to. And of course, there is the little smugness "Hey, I would have done this better. Give a million dollars to a Romanian and he will build you anything within a month". The problem, of course, is when you try to hire two Romanians! :)

Anyway, I loved this book. It ended before it had any chance of getting boring, it detailed the quest of the developers while in the same time putting everything in the context of great software thinkers and innovators and explaining the origin and motivation behind the most common and taken for granted technologies and IT ideas. It is a must read for devs, IT managers and even people that try to understand programmers, like their wives.

Here are some links:
Official book site
Scott Rosenberg's own blog
The official site of the Chandler software project