The word that I think best describes the book is "naive". That's not necessarily a bad thing; people have been hooked by naive stories since forever. Isaac Asimov had some very simplistic plots where everything was going well for the main character. The Harry Potter series was also what I could call naive; didn't hurt it much. From the same perspective I can say that The Vorkosigan Saga, which now spans about twenty novels and short stories, had its share of success (and three Hugo awards) no matter what the writing style. That writing style should have evolved anyhow as each book was written.

Back to The Warrior's Apprentice, though. It's about a kid, son of royalty on his home backward planet, who singlehandedly buys a spaceship, runs a blockade, creates a mercenary force, fools everybody that he is older, is smarter than anyone and also foils a ploy to destroy his father. And the drama is, as teenagers go, that he doesn't get the girl. Now see why I call it naive?

However, I am sure I would have gobbled the whole series up when I was fifteen, so, even if I have decided to not read the other books in the series, it depends on what your tastes are. The Warrior's Apprentice is an easy to read, easy to follow, shortish book. As a travel book I guess it would be decent.

I've finally finished the book WPF in Action with Visual Studio 2008 by Arlen Feldman and Maxx Daymon. Simply put, it was a great book. Most of the programming books focus too much on structure, resulting in very comprehensive information, but giving one little in the way of actual work. WPF in Action is describing features while using them in a few applications that are built almost entirely out of code printed in the book. I think this is the second book any beginner in WPF should read, the first being one of those boring comprehensive ones :)

The book goes from a brief history of Windows Forms and WPF to Hello World in part one, then to describing layouts, styles, triggers, events and animations in the second part. The third goes to create a wiki application using commands and binding, datatemplates, converters, triggers, validation, then custom controls and drawing (including 3D!). I am a big fan of the MVVM pattern, but I liked that in this book, while it got described, it didn't suffocate the other topics, getting only a small subchapter in the binding section. The fourth part explains navigation, XBAP, goes briefly through ClickOnce and Silverlight, then has a large chapter about printing (too large, I believe). The book finishes with transition effects, interoperability with Windows Forms and threading.

All in all I think it was a very nice read. The authors clearly have a lot of experience and are quite qualified to talk not only about the features in WPF, but also the gotchas and some of the problematic implementations or even bugs. The fourth part of the book was a bit of a bore, though. After a pretty heavy 3D drawing ending of part three, I get to read a whole lot about really boring stuff like printing. I am sure that when need arises, though, this is the first book I will open to see what they did.

Bottom line: First three chapters are a must read. Maybe skip the 3D drawing part the the end of part three. The fourth is optional. The authors themselves said that they intended to write something that could be used as a reference, and I think they succeeded. So read the table of contents and see which parts of WPF you are really interested in in those optional parts.

The WPF in Action with Visual Studio 2008 link goes to the publishers site, where you can download the source code and even read some sample chapters.

The final chapter of the Fullmetal Alchemist story has been released today. Have the Elric brothers regained their bodies? Have they sacrificed everything in that Japanese way we so love? Did they get to yet another place filled with Nazis, turned vampire and got to be characters in an Uwe Boll movie? You will have to read the manga to find out! :) The good news it that following the link above you can do just that!

As you may know, the anime finished abruptly a while ago with the two brothers teleporting to our world in the middle of World War 2 and ended up in a ridiculous story. Luckily enough, the manga had none of that bullshit and continued on its merry way. Picking on that, another anime was started, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, which was supposed to delete from our memory the shame of the ending of the first anime. It is now pretty close to ending itself.

My opinion about the whole story is that it was a pretty imaginative concept, a kind of alchemic steampunk universe, filled with wonder, horror and fun stories. I hope you Read/watch it with just as much fun as I have.

Update 4th of July: The anime (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood) has also ended. It covered the exact same things as the manga this time.

I also forgot to mention that the story ends with a few loose ends: Al goes to explore the East and learn Alkahestry, accompanied by the two chimera men that want their original bodies back as well; Ed is going West, trying to learn as much as possible so that he can return and complete his brother's research and then help people together; Mrs Bradley is raising the last homunculus, Selim, as her son, trying to infuse him with love and make him a good person. These three threads can lead to a possible continuation of the Alchemist story. At least, I hope they do.

The concert was supposed to start at 21:00 and end at 23:00, so at about 20:57 my friends started saying that the show will probably start at 22:00, because "all the bands" do this. Three minutes later, AC/DC started singing. I could have synchronised my watch by them. Also, at 23:00 they left the stage. The entire show was professional to the second, things worked almost perfectly, the coreography of their stage actions being totally in sync with the cameras, lights and other props.

I am not a great fan of the Aussie band, I like their music, but I only used to listen to their music when I was a child and I was falling asleep on Highway to Hell. Maybe that's why I thought that song and For Those About to Rock were the best of the songs and the rest weren't even close. But they were good enough.

I thought the vocal didn't quite have it in him, since after about an hour, the guitarist started a solo that lasted for 15 or 20 minutes. The energy in that man (Angus) puts me to shame and would have put me to shame even when I was a teen! While the audience was stuglling with the uncharacteristic cold weather and freezing wind, Angus Young was running around in his underwear, playing the guitar as he did so.

Here is a video from the event. Hav fun!

[youtube:ruBvN3QhRxM]

I don't know what to say about Dust of Dreams. It is the first book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series that is only partially finished, only the first part of a larger story, spread over the ninth and tenth books of the saga. Since the last book from the series, The Crippled God, is not yet released, I have to wait for a year until I get to know what happened.

This being said, I don't really know what happened in this book, either! The Adjunct moves all her forces towards Kolanse, the last of the K'Chain Che'Malle are rising up, there is a group of undead Jaghut that work together, two pairs of Eleint blooded ascendants that have yet to betray each other, a bunch of semi-undead (they have their memories) T'Lan Imass, three pesky gods, a schizophrenic Icarium... the list goes on and on... One thing is for certain: I doubt the tenth book will be able to satisfyingly end the story. The huge number of storylines pretty much guarantees it.

So, I liked the book, but I feel I need to reread it to understand it, maybe just before the tenth one is released. Meanwhile, I am oscillating between the Vorkosigan Saga and the Discworld Saga... Whatever should I start reading? Considering they both have about 20 books each...

Update: It seems the release of The Crippled God has been delayed until 2011, even if there were hopes it would appear in libraries this autumn. Damn!

I am a great TED Talks fan, where most of the talks are impressively smart and useful and well presented, but this one I just had to embed. The title is a little misleading, if you ask me: The hidden influence of social networks. It is more about how statistical analysis on social connections yields all sort of interesting information about the human condition. Enough of this, watch the talk:

The eighth book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, Toll the Hounds was the worst, I think. First, Steven Erikson experimented with a narrator of sorts, all philosophical and moving the "frame" of the story with wise sounding words that actually sounded fake and convoluted like Kruppe's. Second of all, most of the characters started thinking deeply about all kinds of things that had no real relation to the story, all metaphorical and stuff. Third, the stories themselves were vague, disconnected or filled with "his words brought tears into his eyes" scenes. I swear, even Kallor sheds tears at one moment. The ending was a disappointment too, where the convergence of forces that we got used to in the series seems random and pointless. To top it all off, Fisher Kel Tath made his appearance, thus filling the book with bard poems.

As for the story itself... if you wanted closure on something previous, tough luck. Some new characters, some old ones die (including Hood, how cool is that?) most of the action happens in Darujhistan, while the rest is in Black Coral. No Crippled God at all! Also you may find Wiskeyjack fighting in Hood's army. Didn't they ascend? What is he doing there? Pointless battles abound (and I mean pointless, they are not even strategic, just an enumeration of people starting the fight and then, later on, finishing it. Most of the time the result is pretty much known beforehand, but the battle is honorable or something like that.

Mixed news about the ninth and tenth books in the series. First of all, the series ends! Yes, a huge book, with so many open ends and a great mythos, just ends, because the contract was for ten books. That is both brave and insane in the same time, although I suspect that future books will be scoped in the same universe, just not as part of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. The books nine and ten will actually be a single two part story, with the ninth ending in a cliffhanger. Erikson apologized for this:

While I am, of course, not known for writing door-stopper tomes, the conclusion of The Malazan Book of the Fallen was, to my mind, always going to demand something more than modern bookbinding technology could accommodate. To date, I have avoided writing cliff-hangers, principally because as a reader I always hated having to wait to find out what happens. Alas, Dust of Dreams is the first half of a two-volume novel, to be concluded with The Crippled God. Accordingly, if you’re looking for resolutions to various story-threads, you won’t find them. Also, do note that there is no epilogue and, structurally, Dust of Dreams does not follow the traditional arc for a novel. To this, all I can ask of you is, please be patient. I know you can do it: after all, you have waited this long, haven't you?

The ninth book, Dust of Dreams, started cool, though, in a KChain Che'Malle city with a Matron giving a Destriant the task of finding a Mortal Sword and a Shield Anvil. The Destriant is human and the Matron is insane. Promising, huh? I was considering waiting for a year and reading both ending books, but how can I now?

Reaper's Gale, the seventh book in Steven Erikson's series called The Malazan Book of the Fallen made me feel all kinds of things. There was boredom a lot of times, there was uncomprehension in others, there were moments when tears flowed from my eyes as well as great moments of tension. At the end of it, I feel unqualified to actually discuss it. It is still a great book, it ends with a convergence of paths, as all the others have, but it somehow felt different from the previous six books.

I believe that Erikson fell into a well known writer trap. He was so caught in his own world, that he forgot most readers are not, and cannot be unless with great effort. Therefore the characters got out of control. They did things as they pleased, regardless of the reader's need. That is why I think this book was weak compared to the others.

The plot is too complex to expand here. Enough said that Icarium, Karsa Orlong, Quick Ben, Mael, The Errant, Fiddler and Hedge, Bottle and Beak, The Adjunct and Lostara Yil and all the Bonehunters, they all meet in Letheras. Even after reading the book you don't get to know why all that buildup was for, why in the last 50 pages all the characters acted so strangely, where Karsa and Icarium went and, most of all, why did a woman Seguleh have such a small part! The dragons (all of them) are beaten senseless, the Sengars have the worst of luck and the t'Lann Imass are just peripheral characters.

As did the sixth book, but at a larger scale, more avenues are opened than closed. I can barely wait reading the eight book, but I feel cheated a bit. Hope lives on, though :)

Oh, man, what a book this is. Steven Erikson uses a pattern in his epic Malazan Book of the Fallen series, with books that are standalone(ish) and others that continue the humongous story arches started in previous (or, indeed, later) books. The Bonehunters was heralded like a separate story, however that cannot be said to be true in any way. Old characters, patterns that evoke old stories, as is the birth of the Bonehunters, reminiscent of the Bridgeburners, and the sheer number of new characters, races and even gods make this book more of a hinge rather than a singular pillar in the epic. The number of open ended threads and unexplained new characters paves the way for the next four books. I am already starting to fear for the ending of the series.

What the book is about is difficult if not impossible to explain. It starts with a military campaign of punishment against the remnants of the Seven Cities army, but it ends suddenly and quite strange. The leadership of the elder Tavore sister unites the Malazans and binds them to her, in truth becoming hers and not merely an imperial army. There are strange machinations and moves from all the gods one can imagine, most of them hidden and quite hard to understand. What is even harder to explain is the way the empress allies herself with Mallick Rel and Korbolo Dom and starts rumours that make the Malazan population hate the Wickans, in truth war heroes of impecable honor. The ending is explosive but in no way final, leading the path onwards in the story.

I haven't posted a music entry in quite some time, but this will compensate. Here are three female singers and some very good songs:

Cosmic Love from Florence and the Machine. You might also want to listen to The Drumming Song



The Girl you Lost to Cocaine from Sia. You might also want to listen to Buttons, with a fun video.



Hollywood from Marina and the Diamonds. She is a very prolific song writer and I like many of her songs. Not to mention she has a voice I love and she's cute as well. You might also want to listen to Mowgli's Road

The fifth book in the Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series, Midnight Tides is separated by the previous four in location, characters and, I would say, quality. We are witness to a battle between a lost enclave of the Tiste Edur and a lost enclave of The First Empire. From the perspective of the Malazans (which have no involvement at all in this book) both peoples would have been seen as ignorant savages, their conflict merely a petty squabble. The only characters we can recognize are the Crippled God, who is indirectly manipulating things, and Trull Sengar. Trull is almost the main character in the story, explaining his tortured past, although little connects this story with his freeing from the fragment of the Shadow warren in the forth book.

The end, another convergence of characters and stories and gods and magical powers, only opens avenues for further development, rather than actually explaining things. There are some interesting parts to the story, mostly the description of the Letherii culture, so much alike the Western culture today, which Erikson is criticising at every opportunity. He has similar ideas in House of Chains, but he really lets himself free in this one.

Aside from that and from the history of Trull Sengar which is surely to have an impact in the next books, the story was not really that captivating compared to previous chapters in the saga, almost like it all was a prop to describe Trull's way of thinking and to berate capitalism; like one of those TV show episodes that happen in the past so that we can understand what the character will do in the next episode that happens today. Still a good book, though.

Another great Malazan book, the fourth in the series, House of Chains starts with the personal history of Karsa, the Teblor, previously known to us as Shai'k's Toblakai guardian. His tale is both brutal and inspiring, as he evolves from a mindless brute to a ... well... slightly minded brute. At the end of the book there is another battle, like I have been already accustomed by previous reads, only it must be the weirdest one yet. You have to read it to believe it.

Since it started with the singular story of Karsa and because of the many characters that were both introduced, developed from the previous stories or simply clashing at the end, the book felt fragmented (like Raraku's warren :) ). That wasn't so bad, however it opened to many avenues that need to be closed in following books.

At this point it is obvious to me that the Malazan Book of the Fallen is not really a series, but a humongous single story with many interlocking threads and characters. Like chains dragging ghosts of books read, I feel the pressure to end the series so I will probably start hacking away at the fifth book this week.

My friend Meaflux mentioned a strange concept called polyphasic sleep that would supposedly allow me to spend less time sleeping, thus maximizing my waking time. I usually love sleep, I can sleep half a day if you let me and I am very cranky when forcefully waken up... as in every day when going to work, doh! Also, I enjoy dreaming and even nightmares. Sure, I get scared and lose rest and there are probably underlying reasons for the horrors I experience at night sometimes, but they are cool! Better than any Hollywood horror, that's for sure. My brain's got budget :)

Anyway, as I get older I understand more and more the value of time, so a method that would give me an extra of 2 to 6 hours a day sounds magical and makes me reminisce of the good times of my childhood when I had time for anything! Just that instead of skipping school I would skip sleep. But does it work?

A quick Google shows some very favourable articles, including one called How to Hack your Brain and the one on Wikipedia, which is ridiculously short and undocumented. A further search reveals some strong criticism as well, such as this very long and seemingly documented article called Polyphasic Sleep: Facts and Myths. Then again, there are people that criticise the critic like in An attack on polyphasic sleep. Perhaps the most interesting information comes from blog comments from people who have tried it and either failed miserably or are extremely happy with it. Some warn about the importance of the sleep cycles that the polyphasic sleep skips over, like this Stage 4 Sleep Deprivation article.

Given the strongly conflicting evidence, my only option is to try it out, see what I get. At least if I suddenly stop writing the blog you know you should not try it and lives will be saved :) Ok, so let's summarise what this all is about, just in case you ignored all the links above.

Most people are monophasic sleepers, a fancy name for people who sleep once a day for about 8 hours (more or less, depending on how draconic your work schedule and responsibilities are). Many are biphasic, that means they sleep a little during the afternoon. This apparently is highly appreciated by "creative people", which I think means people that are self employed and doing well, so they can afford the nap. I know many retired people have a biphasic sleep cycle at least and probably children. Research shows that people normally feel they need to sleep most at around 2:00 and 14:00, which accounts for the sleepiness we feel after lunch. The mid day sleep is also called Siesta.

Now, poliphasic sleep means you reduce your sleep (which in the fancy terminology is called core sleep) and then compensate by having short sleep bursts of around 20 minutes of sleep at as fixed intervals as possible called naps. This supposedly "fixes" your brain with REM sleep, which is the first in the sleep lifecycle, however it is a contested theory. The only sure thing seems to come from an italian researcher called Claudio Stampi who did a lot of actual research and who clearly stated that sleeping many short naps is better than sleeping only once at the same number of hours of sleep. So in other words six 20 minutes naps are better than one 3 hour sleep.

Personally, I believe there is some truth to the method, as many people are actually using it, but with some caveats. Extreme versions like the Uberman (six naps a day, resulting in 2 hours of actual sleep) probably take their toll physiologically, even if they might work for the mental fitness. Also, probably some people are better suited than others for this type of customised sleep cycles. And, of course, it is difficult for a working man to actually find the place and time to nap during the afternoon, although I hear that it has become a fashion of sorts in some major world cities to go to Power nap places and sleep for 20 minutes in special chairs. No wonder New Yorkers are neurotic :) On a more serious yet paranoid note: what if this works and then employers make it mandatory? :-SS

So, in the interest of science, I will attempt this for a while, see if it works. My plan is to sleep 5 hours for the core, preferably from 1:00 to 6:00, then have two naps, one when I get back from work (haven't decided if before or after dinner, as there are people recommending not napping an hour after eating) and another close to 8:30 when I go to work. So far I have been doing it for three days, but it seems all this needs at least a few weeks of adjustment.

Now, with 5 hours and 40 minutes of sleep instead of 7 I only gain 1.33 hours a day, but that means an extra TV show, programming a small utility, reading a lot and maybe even writing... so wish me luck!

Update: I did try it, but I didn't get the support I needed from the wife, so I had to give it up. My experience was that, if you find the way to fall asleep in about 5 minutes, the method works. I didn't feel sleepy, quite the contrary, I felt energized, although that may be from the feeling of accomplishment that the thing actually works :) Besides, I only employed the method during the work week and slept as much as I needed in the weekend. I actually saved about 40 hours a month, which I could use for anything I wanted. If one works during that time, it means an increase in revenue to up to 25%. That's pretty neat.

From all the animes that I've watched, Cowboy Bebop must be in the top three or five. It was an imaginative mix of space sci-fi and film noir, jazz and fight movies. The director of said anime, Shinichirō Watanabe, also did another anime called Samurai Champloo that I just finished watching. It is an imaginative mix of samurai era and Tarantino movies, hip hop and gangster movies. Even if it is sort of formulaic, this recipe for animes produced some pretty cool results. I thoroughly enjoyed the series and, at the end of the 26Th and last episode, I was crying for more.

The story revolves around three characters: a young girl looking for a mysterious samurai that smells of sunflowers, a samurai looking for purpose in life and a low life thug with an unconventional but deadly style of sword fighting. In the end, they meet some very dangerous people, thus ending the whole story arc. I have to say that, even if the fights in the main story arc were better and the emotions stronger, I enjoyed the other stuff, the episodes on the side, a lot more, even if most of the time they did not take themselves seriously... or maybe perhaps because of that very reason.

I completely recommend this to any anime lover, it is a nicely animated, with a cool soundtrack, and with an ingenious story.

Third book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, Memories of Ice is another masterpiece of epic fantasy from Steven Erikson. What Deadhouse Gates had in shere scope of military strategy, this book has in number of people and characters as well as levels of magic. If in Gardens of the Moon the characters would avoid gathering too much power in a single place, Memories of Ice practically heaps mages and powerful creatures.

I enjoyed the book a lot, even though I think the multitude of important characters and the magnitude of their powers was a bit overwhelming. Also, the battles seemed more chaotic, less strategic, considering they came after the impressive story of Coltaine's campaign in Deadhouse Gates. All this was compensated by troop numbers in the hundreds of thousands, major magic users in the tens, an alliance of the T'Lan Imass allied with Caladan Brood and the Tiste Andii and the Barghast and the Malazans and the Rhivi and so many others against the cannibal army of a Jaghut manipulated by a god and so many other gems.

I started reading the fourth book in the series and I will be reviewing it as fast as I can.