The fifth book in the Dexter Morgan series by Jeff Lindsay, Dexter is Delicious is slightly better written than the first four, but also less credible. The main character is torn between his Dark Passanger and the desire to love and protect his newly born child. He thus decides to "become human" in the worst possible moment. His brother Brian, who attempted to kill Dexter's adoption sister Deborah, also makes an appearance. The bad guys in the story are a cannibal ring and they are quite the gourmet, requiring Dexter as a main course.

The problem with this book, apart from the general Dexter Morgan hard to swallow leaps of faith, is that the Dark Passenger is pushed back, as Dexter gets in tough with his parental instincts. For me, at least, Dark-Dexter was the main character and the mischievous whispers of his inner demon were the delight of the series. If I would want to know people having kids and loving their pinkness I would read something else entirely.

I will continue to follow the series, but I can't help feeling a little dissappointed every time I read one of the books in the series. With such a wonderful subject, the possibilities are limitless and a great deal of potential wasted.

I've remembered this song when reading a review of the third movie in the Lost Boys franchise and watching its trailer. Really, you should watch the first one. The others two are a probably a completely different thing. I haven't watched them, yet. The remade version of the song in the trailer immediately rekindled some of the feelings I had when watching as a kid the atmospheric original film; this is proof of its value, I believe. Also, many artists have covered the song in different and interesting ways, listed below.

I will not get into the whole "Poor Corey Haim" thing, I didn't really have much love for the guy, but in Lost Boys he was cool. Here is the song, with a fan made video:


Some nice covers from the tube:
by Ashford Twins
by Blutengel
by Nikki McKibbin
by Carfax Abbey
by Ventana

Enjoy.

I've just seen the last episode of the first season of Caprica, the series offshooting from Battlestar Galactica. There will be no second season, as the show has been cancelled. Why is that?

Let's start with something other than pure financial interests (oh, you TV network Guatrau!) and discuss the effort that was put in the series. You have a very successful and innovative series like Battlestar Galactica, creating an entire universe with its technology and religions and cultures, and then you go further and create a new series that actually reproduces the lives of people on those worlds. You get cultural criminal organisations, religious fanatics, technologists, robots, AI, virtual worlds, space travel, fashion, music, everything! This is the hardest part of any story: the setup. So you get the setup done and then you... stop writing the story because of low viewer turnout? Are you stupid?! Just tell it in a way that will please your stupid audience and also continue the effort, or can't your little brain get around that?

Then it is about the actor effort. God(s), I hated Clarice Willow and you know why? Because Polly Walker did a great job playing that character, down to the microexpressions and little scheming eye movements. Eric Stoltz, Esai Morales, even the teenagers and kids played well, creating really complex likeable or hateable characters. The creator, Ronald D. Moore, which I totally hate for ruining the end seasons of Battlestar Galactica, also did his best and I can see that it is a great show. And you are going to piss on that? The success of any project lies in the motivation to do it. All these people were motivated and you, money grabbing assholes, pissed in their faces. Shame doesn't begin to cover it. I don't want to shame you, I want you to die a horrible death, you soulless vampires!

And then there is the audience, your precious little numbers. Do you guys know why your network is called SyFy for? I will tell you, so you can say "oh!" with your carefully arranged heads; I guess this is coming as a surprise: it comes from the old name of SciFi, which in turn comes from science fiction. Now you fuckers get what your audience is? Or did you rename the channel only because you have no idea what it was about anyway? Kudos for HBO for raising the standards cause you are just letting them drop in the gutter.

So, in conclusion: Fuck you, SyFy Channel and all your executives, and as you are doing everything possible to stiffle creativity, I wish you a very creative and painful death!

Programming Collective Intelligence is easy to read, small but concise, and its only major flaw is the title; and that is because it is misleading. The book touches quite heavily on using collective information and social site APIs, but what it is really about is data mining. It may not be a flaw with the majority of readers, but personally I wouldn't care about the collective, the Facebook API or anything like that, but I was really interested in the different ways to analyse data. In that sense, this book can be taken as a reference guide on data mining.

Each algorithm and idea is accompanied by Python sources. I personally dislike Python as a language, but the author afirms he chose it intentionally because the algorithms look clear and the source is small, with its purpose unhindred by many language artefacts. The book was so interesting, though, that I plan (if I ever find the time :( ) to take all the examples and do them in C#, then place them on Github.

The book covers classification and feature extraction, supervised and unsupervised algorithms, filtering and discovery and it also has exercises at the end of each chapter. Here is a short list:

• Making Recommendations - about the way one can use data from user preferences in order to create recommendations. Distance metrics and finding similar items to the ones we like or people with similar tastes.
• Discovering Groups - about classifying data into different groups. Supervised and unsupervised methods are described, hierarchical clustering, dendograms, column clustering, K-Means clustering and diferent methods of visualisation.
• Searching and Ranking - it basically explains step by step how to make a search engine. Word frequency, word distance, location of a document, counting methods, artifical neural networks, the Google PageRank algorithm, extraction of information from link text, and learning from user clicks can be found in this chapter.
• Optimization - simulated annealing, hill climbing, genetic algorithms are described and exampled here. The chapter talks about optimizing problems like travel schedules and the example uses data from Kayak.
• Document Filtering - a chapter about filtering documents based on preferences or getting rid of spam. You can find here Bayesian filtering and the Fisher method.
• Decision Trees - a very interesting method of splitting information items into groups that have a hierarchical connection between them. The examples use the Zillow API
• Bulding Price Models - k-Nearest neighbours, weighted neighbours, scaling.
• Advanced Classification - Kernel Methods and Support Vector Machines. This is a great chapter and it show some pretty cool uses of data mining using the Facebook API
• Finding Independent Features - reviews Bayesian classification and clustering, then proposes Non-Negative Matrix Factorisation, a method invented circa the late 90s, a powerful algorithm which uses matrix algebra to find features in a data set
• Evolving Intelligence - bingo! Genetic Programming made easy. Really cool.
• Algorithm Summary, Third Party Libraries and Mathematical Formulas - if you had any doubts you can use this book as a data mining reference book, the last three chapters eliminate them. An even more concise summary of the methods explained in the book, listing every math formula and obscure library used in the book

Conclusion: I really loved the book and I can hardly wait to take it apart with a computer in hand.

It's been a while since I've last posted some music. This is not the kind of music I would listen to, mostly, but it is all Japanese music, 5 seconds of each band, a lot of bands. I thought it was a nice overview of a type of music I know almost nothing about. Enjoy!

This book is different from the books I usually read because it is an autobiography. However it has enough science in it to be great, enough fantasy in it to be totally inspirational and also it is one of the most real (and thus sad) books I have ever read. What is even nicer is that the book is free online on Anthony Zuppero's site. I can't recommend it enough. Go there, download it, read it: To Inhabit the Solar System

The plot itself is about this physicist guy, diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, who gets into his head that we could build rockets to go to other star systems. It all starts in 1968, when he reads about the Dyson nuclear bomb propulsion, an outrageous scheme to detonate nuclear bombs to push a rocket. From then on, he embarks into jobs that are closer and closer to this purpose, always finding solutions to problems that appear along the way. In the end, he finds a way to cheaply get the water from comets, asteorids, moons and use it to propel spaceships around the Solar System. He practically gives us the keys to the universe, the highways that would allow the thorough exploration and utilization of resources in our solar system. It is just amazing.

There are multiple things that I liked about the book. Most of all, I liked the guy. He is what I would call a true hero: he finds a cause and dedicates his life to it, without any desire for personal gain. He doesn't just blab around about the ideas that he has, he finds people, resources, makes calculations and determines the problems that arise and specific concrete solutions for them. Then the style of the book: so bloody honest, so many things to be learned from the way he repeats what is important, the details of all his thoughts, hopes and desires; a great read. And last, but not least, the technical aspects of the book. After reading it, you will be able to understand each step of getting fuel and construction material from space, using it to propel and build stuff, all in a reasonable enough price and without the need for expensive planet-space trips.

Now, there are some issues with the book. First of all, it is not at all polished. It says its story, but it's also filled with personal notes, incomplete chapters and
various information. My guess is that at some time he wanted to publish the book and no one was interested. Or maybe he just didn't want to waste time polishing the book and stop people from getting the ideas in it. Or maybe he just didn't feel the story ended. Either way, for me it added to the charm and realism of the book, rather than take stuff away.

It was heartbreaking to read about the death of Gene Shoemaker. In the book - the author took it hard - but it so happened I was reading the book while they announced the death of Brian Marsden, another proeminent character in the book, and I felt the pain anew.

Bottom line: you should read this. If not for the quality of the book, not for the realistic description of government agency inner workings and personal tricks to get something done, if not for the amazing person that Anthony Zuppero is, read it for the detailed description on how we could today (actually, from about the 1980's) inexpensively inhabit the Solar System.

Here is an unsettling news: US and Indian filmmakers sign Hollywood-Bollywood deal. In my mind, this means outsourcing to India for movies just as good as the software coming from there, it means working together to control distribution and selection of movie material, coordinating moves so that the huge garbage spewing movie monster we now call Hollywood would have no competitor, ever.

Maybe I am just paranoid, but where are the Internet based movie-hacker studios that should have sprouted everywhere with low budget, but very cool films? Do they all stop at small stuff on YouTube and then get a job in fast-food? Where is the "free market" competition in entertainment?

The Void Trilogy ends with The Evolutionary Void in a typical Hamiltonian way: completely off the scale science and fights, actions with galactic and universal implications and the bunch of special heroic people that lead the entire story to a climactic finish.

I couldn't wait for the last book of the trilogy to get out and I finally got hold of it, but more than a year had passed since reading the first two. Most of the characters I had to remember while reading the book, something that degraded a bit the reading experience. Take it as a hint: before starting a Peter F. Hamilton series of books, make sure they are all available before you start, as you can't let them out of your hands until you get to the end and the feeling of loss is horrible.

Now, about the book itself. The middle of the galaxy hosts an all devouring and unstoppable Void, inside which thought is the main law of physics and which feeds on the mass of the worlds outside in order to sustain itself. Basically, the heroes in the book are battling galactic cancer. The style of the narrative mixes incredibly advanced technology with an archetypal feudal heroic fantasy, bringing them flawlessly together at the end. Not everything makes sense, but then again, not everything could. Simple solutions to problems were available, but never explored, and some characters were popping in and out of the book stream like so many quantum fluctuations. But on the whole, it was a great reading, keeping me connected for the entire length and, unexpectedly judging by the Hamilton books I have read, with a good, satisfying ending.

Now, I plan on reading some non fiction books, then I will probably return to the Prince of Nothing universe. After that, who knows?

I almost expected the guy to be Canadian. :) This series of fantasy books is a masterpiece of writing. Not only it is complex of plot and emotion, but the characters are many, diverse and (most of all) different.

So far, the A Song of Ice and Fire saga, written by American author George R. R. Martin, consists of four books, the first published in 1996 and the last in 2005. At least three other books are planned in this series. The plot is a historical fantasy, but one unlike the books I've read recently. The aspects of magic and otherworldiness are rare, the bulk of the writing being about the feudal world, with kings, knights, low borns, maidens and whores, thieves, rapists and murderers, plotters and honorable men. No wonder that, lacking a lot of special effects, the story has been selected as the basis for a TV series.

But what is more important than anything is that the writing is really good. The characters are all human, with needs, desires, qualities and faults. You can't help but empathise with them, only to suffer at the cruel fate the writer bestows upon them. Not one escapes unscathed from the malice and pettiness of other people or from shere bad luck. You get to like the characters, then Martin fucks them up. I really wanted to use a more elevated language here, but it's the truth: the world he depicts seems horribly real, not a fairy tale of valiant white knights and pure maidens, but of ridiculous people grabbing lustfully whatever life offers them as it is unlikely their fortune is going to last long.

For the bad part, though, I think the author went too deep, got himself responsible for a lot of characters that he must now move forward, in gruesome detail. The fourth book became so large that he had to split it. He did so by character and geography, rather than by time, so a lot of the characters were missing from the fourth book, A Feast for Crows, and left for the fifth, but acting in the same timeline. At the end of A Feast for Crows the author explains his decision to not just split the book in the middle with a "To Be Continued" ending, and hopes for a publication of the second half in a year. That was in 2005. Ahem.

A lot of people are a bit confused by the long wait for the fifth book. Martin keeps making promises that he doesn't keep and, in July this year, he announced that A Dance with Dragons is already 1400 pages long and 5 chapters close to completion. I hope he does finish it quickly enough, although that would only prolong my suffering anyway. I am sure the fifth book will be as brilliant as the others, but then I will have to wait another 5 years for the sixth. I know TV series usually have no plot, but at least they come weekly ;)

Bottom line: The books are great, I recommend them to any lover of fantasy or even historical novels. I can hardly wait for the TV series, A Game of Thrones, as well.

While waiting for the tenth book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen saga, I went and read Prince of Nothing, by another Canadian author, R. Scott Bakker. This is a three book story, first published in 2004, about what I can only describe as a psychopath, member of a rationalizing sect, going out into the world to protect the secret of said sect.

The book is well written, although not nearly as brilliant as the Malazan series. However the subject of it is very interesting, at least from my standpoint. It concerns a human that is trained in the ways of mental manipulation, rationale and causality, something akin to the Vulcans from StarTrek, but with a very human side to it, the one that pushes one to amass power and use their knowledge to manipulate.

No wonder that the "prince of nothing" is the central character in the books, but not the main character, the role being left to a sorcerer, a man that is at the same time keeper of arcane knowledge and the scorn of ordinary humans. I can't help but empathize with the guy: basically a geek in love with a whore, while a psychopath destroys his world with insidious manipulation. ;)

There is another central character to the story, an insane barbarian, like a tortured Conan, who is both terrifyingly strong and ridiculously fragile, both a mindless warrior and a brilliant strategist. He is also, like Achamian the sorcerer, an exponent of humanity.

Prince of Nothing is a very smart book, one that can only get better as the writing skills of Scott Bakker improve. Its assets are both a scientific approach to the human psyche and a veritable intrigue of arcane powers in conflict with each other on the background of huge masses of clueless people. The plot itself is similar to the story in the Berserk manga, at least its start, where the strong warrior chooses to follow the charismatic and ambitious leader only to his doom. The moral, as I saw it, is that while we choose to live our lives with eyes closed, we cannot in good conscience pretend to deserve control over what happens to us.

I hope the series, known as "The Second Apocalypse", continues, since Prince of Nothing raised more questions than gave answers and the plot really caught my attention. A nice book that I warmly recommend.

I was posting a while ago about the first album from Hole's bassist, Melissa Auf Der Maur. I found that the music had a haunting femaleness in it and sounded pretty cool. She has recently released her second album Out of Our Minds and my opinion is... that they were! The songs are lame, like a really wattered out version of the first. Lady, if you don't feel like it, wait until the muse graces you with her presence, don't just write crap because you have a deadline. (Let me do that, ahem...)

Moving on to Linkin Park. A refreshing mixture of hip hop and rock, their first albums (Hybrid Theory and Meteora) made them famous. If you don't count the collection of remixes of their previous songs, their third album, Minutes to Midnight, was released after some time had passed (period during which Mike Shinoda was writing hip hop like crazy and the other guy... well, nobody knows what he did), had some environmental messages, some slow music, maybe some Michael Jacksony save the world songs... It pretty much sucked, but it was also ok. I mean, if you want to mellow down a little, just to try it on, why not? So now I got reminded of them when I accidentally saw Transformers and the theme of the film was sang by Linkin Park and called New Divide. It sounded kind of cool, something that resembled their first albums, so I got their latest album, A Thousand Suns, and tried it on. Long story short: it sucked. There were some cool songs, like Wretches and Kings, or Blackout, but overall, it was a whiny piece of crap. Dude! It's called ROCK, you're letting a Japanese hip hopper make you look like an emo kid trying to sing for the highschool prom.

Ok, now for some of the better songs on these albums:

Melissa auf der Maur - Out of Our Minds



Linkin Park - Wretches and Kings

I quite liked this anime series, one which combined with success the typical demon slaying organisation with a background of describing the culture and history of Japan. In that regard it is quite similar to Ruruoni Kenshin, but without the romantic side and a bit more supernatural.

The plot is set somewhere in the middle of the 19th century, when a government official decided to create an organization to defeat Youi, or demons. These people are called the Ayashi. The main character is a guy that has the power to extract weapons and other useful tools from the names of things. It is a beautiful concept, since in Japanese the characters are very complex, have a lot of meanings and have a habit of evolving through history. Usually a demon can be defeated with a weapon made from it's name, which usually holds extra significance as to what the demon's reason to be is.

The series also describes a very feudal and disgusting Japan, where people are constrained to ridiculous levels by etiquette, social ladder, politics or gender. Many a time, to ensure the survival of their little group, their leader resorts to despicable acts which the team performs with disgust, but a complete lack of choice. Women are treated as commodities, low rank people as livestock, while the rich and powerful engage in complex political struggles to ensure their survival. Scholars are being imprisoned for studying Western concepts, foreigners are considered a bane that people should not come across, while people without a family name and land are tatooed as "floaters" and arrested if caught inside cities.

A lot of the details of the show are about Japanese customs, history and view of the world, so I naturally enjoy this as a background for a fun fighting story. Other people obviously did not think the same way, so it only has 25 episodes, even if originally 52 episodes were planned.

I haven't finished the series yet, I still have the last five episodes to see, but so far I have enjoyed it. There is a manga for it, too, but I didn't find it free online.

Stellvia is an anime with teenage kids saving the world. It starts like a kind of Harry Potter, only the main character is a girl, the academy is in space and there are no Voldermort or Slitherins in sight. All in all it was a fun series to watch, but so easy going and adolescent oriented that I am sure it will not remain in my memory for long.

The plot is simple enough: Earth was devastated by a supernova blast wave, it recovered, then it set out on a mission to defend the Solar System from the second wave, slower but deadlier. Their solution was to create a bunch of stellar academies, fill them with children trained by dedicated teachers, while the whole world stands united against this coming disaster. One can see from this plot alone that the focus is not on realism nor human nature. However, since it does touch all the Japanese topics of choice like pursuit of perfection, positive competition, love between school children and loyalty and "gabatte"-ness, it was nice to watch and I have easily enjoyed it.

Composed of 26 episodes, the series does leave room for more, like humanity exploring the stars. The aliens were never explained and the last episode does show a rebuilt Stellvia star academy with the trainees that saved the world as full students welcoming a new batch of recruits. However, it seems like a second season of Stellvia will never happen, due to creative differences.

I am not much of an art guy, but this thing just blew me away. Not so much the animation itself (it is very original, but... not an art guy) as the volume of effort and work this had to require. Just watch it, it is worth it.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM - the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Forced to wait for the tenth and final novel of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, due to be published this year, I've started to read the books placed in the same universe written by Steven Erikson's friend, Ian Cameron Esslemont. The first of these books is Night of Knives, which is rather short compared with Erikson's novels or, indeed, with the second Esslemont book, Return of the Crimson Guard, which I am reading now.

The book is alert, as it spans a single night on the island of Malaz, during a rare event which weakens the borders between realms. Anything can happen during this night and, indeed, does happen. The island is assaulted by alien ice magic water dwellers, the dead house is under siege and Kellanved and Dancer are making their move towards the throne of Shadow realm. Meanwhile Surly is Clawing her way into the throne, a natural talented girl with too much attitude is trying to get a job and start an adventure and an old retired soldier gives his all once again.

All and all, it was a nice book. The writing style is clearly different from Erikson's, with less descriptive passages, a little more action and a more positive bias, tending to lend people more good qualities and having them end a little better. However, it only takes a few pages to get into the Malazan feel of things and enjoy the book.