Ministry of Intrigue

I have not been posting here much of late, which is partly due to the amount of stuff I’m working on, and partly due to the fact that I’ve been writing and posting stuff in other places around the web, since it is easier. Some of this will get fixed with the next revision of this site, but honestly, it has less to do with those other things I’m working on and a lot more to do with general laziness. Either way, it is high time for an update.

What have I been doing?

Among other things, I’ve been working on the next version of the custom CMS that powers this site. I initially started this process to fix the comment issue I was having, and it quickly turned into a complete rewrite of the Django applications I use to power Andrlik.org. It’s a lot of work, mostly because I started off with way too large of feature list. I would trim some of those features, but at this point the actual code for the new stuff is already written. Ironically, it is the new comment application (among a few other things like actual template design) that are not completed yet.

The new site is being rewritten from the ground up to take advantage of all the new features and capabilities available in Django trunk, and it will incorporate pulling detailed activity data from virtually every social network I participate in that provides an API. I have not decided to what extent this information will play a role in the actual layout of this site, the primary purpose of these features is to provide me with an automated backup of all of that data. In addition to pulling data from social networks, I’m adding more discrete media types to the site which should allow me to do more interesting things such as podcasts if it ever strikes my fancy to do so. There is some basic podcast support baked into the blog application for the current site, but it’s inelegant and a pain to use.

In addition to new features for me, I’m incorporating the ability for readers to authenticate using OpenID, Facebook, or Google, the latter two options being new, while improving compatibility of my OpenID solution. I’m doing this because I’m planning to allow comments from authenticated users only, which allows me to utilize different privacy settings for any posts.

So, yeah, that should be cool. At least, whenever I get around to finishing it and deploying the new version to the server.

I’ve also been busy with work, and doing a lot of traveling, which means by the time I get back to the hotel room I am ready to pass out. When at home, I’ve been reading, spending quality time with my girlfriend, and working on yet another project that I can’t talk about yet.

Splattered Content

While I have not been posting or bookmarking here, I have been posting to various other sites online. Of course, there is always my Twitter feed, where I post random bits of questionable wit, as well as links to stories I find interesting. In addition, as I’ve been reading, I’ve been posting quite a few book reviews to my Goodreads account, which I try to also mirror on my Readernaut profile, when possible. In general, I don’t include rereading books in my activity streams but there has certainly been a lot of that going on as well.

Every time I post a review to either service, I feel like I should expand it out into a real post for this site, but I rarely take the time to, which is a habit I hope to change in the upcoming months. In the meantime, I thought I would include some of my Goodreads reviews for books I’ve recently read that are particularly notable.

Memories of the Future, Part 1 by Wil Wheaton: 4 out of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. I laughed so much while reading Memories of the Future, more than I have for any other book in recent memory.

The episode recaps are the real stars of the book, and I would often stop to read a particularly hilarious passage out loud to my girlfriend. However, this isn’t just a book of condensed snark; Wheaton’s love of Star Trek TNG comes through on every page. His profound respect for his fellow actors, and his affection for what the show will become gives the recaps a humane quality. As a result, the snarky episode recaps, feel less like a nasty internet posting (the natural habitat of undiluted snark), and more like the playful ribbing of a friend at the dinner table, while reminiscing about that embarrassing event that everyone had to go through back in high school.

It’s a great book, but I do have a tiny niggling complaint. There’s a lot of references in the recaps to later episodes by their title, which I wouldn’t mind if the recaps of those episodes were in the same volume, however a few of them are slated for volume two, and since I don’t have the 1st season of TNG around the house to figure out what Wheaton’s referring to, I felt left out of a joke that probably won’t make sense to me until the second volume comes out (soon, I hope).

There were also a couple episodes where Wheaton didn’t actually recall anything from behind the scenes, so for those entries the “Behind the Scenes Memory” section would be a little weak.

To sum up: I loved this book and can’t wait for volume two. However, I knock off one star for the two small complaints I mention because I am a bit of a prick despite Wil Wheaton’s sage advice: “Don’t be a dick!”

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi: 3 out of 5 stars.

I enjoyed this book, which actually surprised me a bit. Typically with sci-fi I tend to prefer heavier fare, but Scalzi’s light touch with his prose worked for me quite well. It’s central idea is spectacular story-fodder, and I’m interested in seeing what he does with it in the later books of the series.

Unfortunately, there is a little bit of a strange disconnect in the story, which might have a lot to do with the fact that the protagonist seems to excel at everything, and never seems to face a real challenges, so the central conflict of the story feels almost superficial. Also, the alien species are painted in very broad strokes, and it gave me the impression (rightly or wrongly) that the universe was not fully realized by the author beyond the limited conflicts that are depicted. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I like to feel a bit more depth to the world, and I might have been able to ignore it had the protagonist faced more challenges.

Don’t ge me wrong, I enjoyed the book, and will try out the next book in the series, but the disconnection I felt means I can only give it three stars.

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest: 4 out of 5 stars

This was my first experience with Priest’s work, and it was a pleasure. I found it to be a brilliantly imagined steampunk novel set during an extended Civil War, and in Seattle, a catastrophic event has brought the Blight upon the city, which causes the dead to walk. The story focuses on a mother seeking to save her son, whom has charged off into the city to find out about his father. Along the way she encounters air pirates, zombie rotters, and the other people who choose to brave the Blight, living beneath the ground and in sealed vaults for protection. However, it’s also a mystery, for the son’s quest will lead them both on a journey to answer the questions raised by the Blight, and to learn once and for all the real history of the experiment that brought the plague.

The book is well written, the action is tight, and it’s just a hell of a lot of fun to read. The only complaint I have is that the last chapter seemed a little flat to me, almost an unnecessary epilogue, that answers none of the questions that still remain, but without actually building any sort of wonderment or cliffhanger. This is the reason that I’m only giving it four stars.

The Child Thief: A Novel by Brom: 4 out of 5 stars

I admit that I approached this book with trepidation. In the past, I have encountered a number of attempts to retell the Peter Pan story, most of them spectacularly bad. Add in the fact that the author only goes by a single name, and alarm bells begin to ring.

I was pleasantly surprised. What I found was a dark, tense and well written piece of fiction that successfully reinvents Peter Pan, while still holding true to the core elements of the original. Brom doesn’t cheat. Peter is an unpredictable and violent figure, who is clearly borderline insane. However, Brom also demonstrates quite clearly that Peter is a pawn of greater forces, and the enemy that he is being pitted against is truly horrifying. With this in mind, you might almost forgive him for stealing the abused children of the world in order to serve as infantry in the battle, but the author rightly refuses to let Peter off that easy. You are confronted with the terror the children feel, and that is what makes this novel work.

And if that wasn’t enough, it comes in a beautiful hardcover edition with artwork from the artist himself. It’s definitely worth a read, so if you hear the same alarm bells I did, cover you ears. This book is worth it.

I’d also add in that you should read all of the Joe Abercrombie books in First Law trilogy, including the one-shot follow-up novel Best Served Cold. However, I recommend you start with the trilogy, and I am including my review of the first book. It is worth noting that the first book of the trilogy is the only one that I awarded less than five stars.

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie: 4 out of 5 stars

An outstanding debut novel and start to a trilogy. Abercrombie does a wonderful job of introducing all of the complex characters and manages to make them all fascinating in their own right, although every reader may favor some more than others. In my case, I am particularly captivated by both Logan, the practical barbarian that is haunted with regret, and Glotka, the crippled torturer and inquisitor.

Abercrombie is also very effective at introducing the reader to his world, without much tedious exposition, which is a welcome change from a lot of other epic-fantasy. He also clearly illustrates what is at stake and carefully sets the events in motion that one assumes will drive the course of the story in the next two books.

I do have one complaint, and that is that occasionally Abercrombie starts a chapter without clearly telling you which character’s point of view the narrative is being told through, which can be a bit confusing. Usually, you can tell just from the voice of text, which is quite an accomplishment on the author’s part, but occasionally I would encounter a chapter and it would take me half a page to orient myself, which is the only reason I’m knocking off one star.

I can easily seeing this book joining the likes of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles as one of my favorite epic fantasy series produced recently, and I can’t wait to start on the next book in The First Law series.

Needless, to say I loved the rest of that series.

Get Back To Work

I’m serious, I’m sure we all have shit to do. I’m sure the various things I am working on will keep me busy over the next few months, but I will try to post here more often so that I don’t have to do such a gigantic braindump next time.

I can’t decide if NaNoWriMo is harder than I thought it would be, or if I’m just a bigger wimp than I thought I was. Regardless, it is tough. So, rather than writing out a long entry about it, when I should be working on the novel, I decided it would be quicker to record a quick video.

More updates to follow as the month goes on.

It appears that I have written myself into a corner here.

When I first started this site back in 2004, I intended it just as a writing exercise. It was supposed to be a place where I would publish daily in order to build discipline as a writer. I had just completed a semester in the Undergraduate Nonfiction Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa, and so a lot of my early entries were the sort of literary nonfiction that was emphasized in that program. It was originally an anonymous Blogspot site, so that I would write comfortably and without inhibition. It was a great exercise, and I wrote a few entries that I was proud of.

Eventually, I decided to drop the pseudonym. My friends had mostly figured out what I was up to, and the more I thought about the importance of owning your words, the sillier the idea of pseudonymous writing became. So I dropped the pseudonym and shortly afterwords purchased my domain name and set up a proper Wordpress installation. Everything was fine at first, but I found I slowly became more cautious in my writing. I’m not talking about the nastiness that usually begins to accompany anonymity (per this theory), but rather that I took less risks with my writing.

I began writing far more structured pieces, less personal and more review or tutorial oriented. Those pieces also attracted the most attention from other people, which encouraged me to write more posts in that vein. Because I am a geek, a lot of that writing was focused around tech topics, although I continued to review books and movies. I actively resisted the Ministry of Intrigue being classified as another “tech” site, although I was advised by several people online that the lack of focus made it difficult to get traffic. I also couldn’t control how other people described the site, and because I loved geeking out on technology, the “tech” label stuck.

Eventually I accepted it and while I occasionally covered other topics, I started thinking of the site as a place devoted to tech and even began describing it that way. At first this was just fine, because I love talking about technology and I’m into this stuff. However, over time I found that I was writing less and less, as I struggled with writing posts that did more than contribute to the echo-sphere.

A change was needed, and conveniently I had just discovered Django, so I rewrote my site using it. In part this was an exercise to learn the framework, partly to build a CMS tailored to my needs, and in part to procrastinate on writing content. Once the site was built, it allowed me to do link-blogging, which was a great way for me to do quick commentary on stories that came to my attention, without requiring the effort of writing a longer post. Writing longer posts requires a particular level interest on my part, and when possible I try to skip doing so for stories that have already been talked to death around the web.

Here’s the deal though: I never wanted to be a “tech blogger.”

I wrote myself into an unwanted pigeonhole, and I’ve been stuck in it for quite a while. Everybody knows that the only way out of any type of hole is to crawl out of it, and it’s high time that I do that. So, I’m going to start shifting the focus of this site, back to the more general category of “assorted geekery.” I’m sure there will still be plenty of tech stuff, because I’m interested in it, but I’m going to start writing more often on other topics as well, and hopefully get back to doing more pieces that flex the right side of my brain.

In addition to writing, I’m going to start doing some more mixed media stuff, in particular video, although I haven’t ruled audio out yet either. At some point I’ll redesign the site to highlight these new types of content, but for now I’ll just embed them inside of standard entries. I’m still primarily a writer, and unfamiliar with working in these other mediums, so expect plenty of false starts and sloppy beginnings, but over time I hope to improve. The first of these videos, being my awkward introduction to the format, in which I ironically spend a lot of time talking about my site in terms of covering tech, is embedded below.

I don’t know if this new direction is going to go anywhere, but hopefully by allowing myself to experiment and write more freely it will help the site to become more pure.

I hope you will join me on the journey.

This weekend I went to the Body Worlds exhibit at The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. It was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.

For those of you unfamiliar with this particular exhibition, Body Worlds is the brainchild of anatomist Gunther von Hagens, who developed a process called plastination, that allows him to preserve bodies and tissues by replacing water and fat with certain types of plastics. The end result is that the specimens do not smell or decay, allowing detailed study for an extended period of time. Body Worlds is a series of traveling museum exhibitions of primarily human bodies that have been plastinated in such a way to reveal their anatomical structure and thus highlight how the body functions. In most cases, the skin has been removed to reveal the musculature underneath, and in many cases different parts of the body are opened or removed in order to expose or illustrate a particular function. In more extreme examples, the plastinate is reduced to a single system, such as showing just the nervous system or just the vascular system. More dramatic cross-sections also appear to better demonstrate how everything in the body goes together.

I am fascinated by biology and anatomy in particular, and quite happily spent two hours wandering through the exhibit. I was enthralled with getting an opportunity to see the human body up close in this way, being able to see the complex striations and texture of muscle tissue and how the flesh differs in the various parts of our body. It was also a treat to see the brain and nervous system up close, and how they connect to the rest of the structure that is the human form. It is funny how we have a tendency to hold an image of the brain as being far larger than it actually is, such that it is a bit of a surprise when you actually see an open skull. You look at the exposed brain and think, “Wow, that’s it? It’s so small!”

There are three roving exhibitions at the moment, and as I understand it there are plans for even more. Currently they are in Chicago, Dallas and Phoenix, and you can always find out where they are going next at the official site. If it comes near you, don’t miss the opportunity to go. It is really one of the most incredible things you will ever see.

Wow, where the hell have I been?!

It’s two days shy of a month since I last posted, which is an eternity online. As is probably obvious, I’ve been really busy with work and all the other interesting things that life can throw at you.

My software for work is rapidly approaching the deadline testing date, and in the world of personal programming projects I decided to completely redesign the database for the diplomacy server from scratch. I’ve learned a few things in the last couple months that illustrate some of the more fundamental errors in my previous model. I’ve also been busy trying to learn how to use the Symfony framework for PHP, as well as beginning to do some dabbling in Python and Ruby. We’ll see how that goes…

Of course the thing that’s been taking up the most of my former blogging time has been my new baby. I built him myself.

I apologize for the low quality of the photos, they are just a couple quick “post-delivery” shots I took with my cell-phone right after I had it up and running.

This was my first build, something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and I am really happy with it. Since I put it together I’ve been having a ton of fun tweaking and optimizing all of my BIOS settings, customizing my Gentoo installation, setting up the old computer as a home file and database server, and checking out the performance of my new system.

The Specs:

• Case: Thermaltake Armor Full ATX Tower (it’s really huge, but an awesome cooler with a ton of space)
• CPU: AMD Athlon 64 bit X2 (dual core) 4400+ (currently at 2.2Ghz, but I haven’t even started overclocking the CPU yet)
• CPU Fan/Heatsink: Zalman CNPS7000B-CU LED (blue LED cooling fan, super quiet and takes great care of the CPU)
• Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
• Memory: 2GB Corsair Twin DDR Ram
• Video Card: GeForce 6800 XT 256MB Overclocked
• Sound Card: Audigy 2 ZS
• First Hard Drive: SATA Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM 74GB w/ 16MB cache
• Second Hard Drive: 3.0 GB/s SATA Western Digital Caviar 7200 RPM 250GB w/ 16MB cache
• First IDE: NEC ND-3550A 16X DVD+/-RW Burner
• Second IDE: SONY DVD-ROM 16X
• And a floppy in case I need to flash the BIOS

Since my old computer was being relegated to server duties, I took my nice Creative speakers and Westinghouse 19” LCD flat panel and gave them to my new computer. I administrate the old one through ssh and sftp (mostly because I’m too lazy to set up a standard ftp server and sshd gives me sftp for free).

Oh yeah, and I also recently discovered the joys of gaming in Linux, so that’s been distracting too.

I’ll be back with more frequent posts from now on, I promise.

If you can see this post, that means that your ISP has updated its DNS cache and you are now viewing the Ministry of Intrigue at its new home!

Everything should work for you now, but in the off chance you left me a non-spammy comment inbetween the previous post and now there is a chance that it didn’t quite survive the move. If you think that’s the case, just leave your comment again and if it is a duplicate I’ll make sure to only display the one and delete the other.

Have a good weekend!

Just so you all know, it is extremely difficult to eat a cinnamon roll and look professional at the same time. You either pick it apart and end up with frosting all over your fingers, or you attempt to bite the roll whole leaving you looking like some sort of manchild with a face smeared with sugary paste.

“Cinnamon roll! Cinnamon roll! Me likey the sweet roll!”

It’s actually pretty embarrassing.

That is all.

I apologize for the delay between posts, but I’ve been a little busy the last couple days. However, I do have a few things in the works and hopefully I’ll be able to post quite a bit tomorrow, including my review of V for Vendetta.

Stay tuned.

I haven’t posted in a few days, in part because I’ve been pretty busy, and partly because I’ve been overhauling my system with a brand new Linux distribution.

I’m now running Gentoo and I absolutely love it. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Gentoo is special flavor of Linux that gives all the control back to the user. Absolutely every detail of your environment can be optimized for your hardware and configured to your taste. In addition, Gentoo uses a brilliant and practical approach to package management: Portage. With Portage, all packages are downloaded and compiled from scratch in order to ensure compatibility with your system. Best of all, Gentoo provides an environment variable called USE, that allows you to define what options Portage should use when compiling, which allows you to avoid needing to download a lot of excess dependencies that will only bog down your system if you have no intention of using those features. For example, if I set part of my USE variable to “-gnome kde”, my software will not be compiled with any Gnome support, which is just fine by me as I hate Gnome and never use it. Only the KDE components of the package will be compiled which saves me a lot of time and space in the long run.

Of course, like all good things this flexibility comes at an intimidating price. In order to install Gentoo, you need to manually install and compile your whole system from source. Certainly a non-trivial task, and it scared me away from it for a while. I actually attempted installing Gentoo a while ago, and successfully wrote my configuration files, compiled my kernel and was able to boot successfully into my new environment. Unfortunately, the automated configure scripts for my X server were not able to identify my graphics card and after a couple days of frustration as I tried to manually write my xorg.conf file, I gave up and went back to SuSE 9.3. I had projects I was working on and couldn’t afford the time away from my graphical desktop to fiddle with it. Oh, but it haunted me.

You see, I knew that Gentoo was what I really wanted, and it frustrated me that I gave up on it. My inner geek was emasculated by my failure to complete the installation. It ate at me day after day, and I found myself idly surfing the Gentoo forums debating to try another seven hour installation process.

The final straw was when Gentoo released their graphical LiveCD installer disk. The graphical installer is still experimental as is the dialog based command line installer on the disk, which is fine as those application are designed to make the process faster NOT easier. If I hadn’t had experience with the Gentoo manual install I would have had no idea what I was doing. Now, I don’t say this to scare you all away, but I just want to make sure no one goes and downloads the LiveCD iso thinking that it will do it all for them. I cannot stress enough how important a solid understanding of the manual install process works (which you can still use the LiveCD for). The graphical installer certainly did speed up the process quite a bit, but the best part of the new LiveCD is not the installer, it’s the embedded Gnome environment with sample applications. During the long compilations I was able to browse the web, chat on Gaim and play a few games, which made the installation time fly by. In addition, if you are using the graphical installer and instruct it to install Xorg then it will copy its dynamically generated xorg.conf file to your new system configuration, which you may need to tweak later, but it will be functional.

Since then, I’ve been playing with Gentoo, adding programs and tweaking my configuration. I did have some initial trouble getting my OpenGL acceleration working, which turned out to be a hardware problem with my computer’s chipset. Simple solution: I picked up an ATI Radeon 9250 video card, which I really should have gotten a while ago anyway. I recompiled my kernel (which is really no sweat once you’ve done it once or twice and gotten past the intimidation factor), installed the new drivers from Portage and ran the configuration script. It works beautifully!

Gentoo is certainly not for weak of heart, and you have to be willing to spend some time getting it all set up. However, once it is up and running it is one of the fastest and most stable distros I have ever used. If you work for it, you will be rewarded.

Last night I was monkeying around on my computer while enjoying the David Cross comedy album Shut Up, You Fucking Baby!, and I noticed a dark shape out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see what it was and saw nothing, so I went back to my computing. A short moment later I detected the dark blur in my peripheral vision again and swung around to check and again saw nothing.

Okay, so moths move to slowly to pull this off so I’m probably just getting confused and seeing the rim of my glasses and misinterpreting it, I thought to myself.

A short moment later I saw it again, this time with an accompaning breeze striking my cheek. I turned quickly and saw that there was a panicked bat flying in circle around my apartment’s living room. I quickly ducked down and tried to evaluate the situation, dropping even farther to the floor each time the bat came my way. The first thing I could think of was that incident back in high school.

Shit, I thought, I do not want to hurt another bat tonight.

I tried to evaluate my other options. Using a blanket as a net would be too difficult and might just freak the little guy out more, there was no way to get him out the window because of the screens and as I didn’t know how he got in, I couldn’t just send him out the same way. I couldn’t call the property manager as I wasn’t sure it fell under the domain of their responsibilities and I didn’t want the bat in my apartment that long. I concluded that since the bat was flying in a panicky circle it must be looking for a way out, therefore if I can somehow get it to fly out the door I’ll just let it fly around the hallway and let the landlord deal with it tomorrow.

So I tried opening the door, but realized with the structure of the room that my holding it open from inside the apartment would increase the likelyhood that the little rodent would fly right into me. Propping it open was out of the question as I would need to be able to close it quickly once he flew out. So instead I adopted this ridiculous position. I went out into the building hallway and crouched down low on my knees pressing the palm of my hand against the inside of the door frame to keep it open. I then waited for my little friend to sense the opening by echolocation and come check it out.

Fifteen minutes passed, with the bat flying infuriating close to the door only to retreat farther back into my apartment. In the meantime, I am extrememely uncomfortable as my neighbors far down the hallway are coming and going, and while they don’t look down in my direction, it is only a matter of time as David Cross is still blaring from my computer speakers with his off-color brand of humor. At this point, the bat decides climbing up onto my verical blinds is a good idea and tries to make itself comfortable. In frustration, I picked up one of my sandals and carefully aimed it to strike the blinds hard enough to scare the bat without hurting it.

It did scare the bat. It also broke one of the blinds. I swore to myself as the bat retreated not out the door but farther back into one of the bedrooms.

Fuck, I thought, looks like I am hitting a bat tonight.

I went back into my apartment, donned my leather gloves and chose as my weapon a triangular pillow my sister brought me from Thailand. Hard enough to stun, soft enough that I may avoid injuring the little guy. I went back to my room and found him hanging from the blinds again. Once again, I tossed a sandal, although this time with far less force triggering the bats boring circle of doom.

I struck once with my death pillow and knocked him to the floor. However, as soon as I took a step he began flapping, flew confusedly at low altitude, and then resumed his flight pattern. So, I struck again with a little more force sending him sliding into my laundry. I couldn’t see him, so I assumed he must be buried. Cautiously, I approached and began peeling away clothes until I came upon him on the floor, very stunned. He tried to crawl a little ways forward and I quickly wrapped him up in an old sheet and deposited him outside the building. He appeared to be breathing, but was definately unconscious. He appeared to be uninjured, but I am no vet.

Goddammit bats! Why do you always make me hit you???