Diary of a Network Geek

Hey, remember how I was looking for new music some weeks ago?

Well, I found some.
So, I’m pretty much always looking for new music these days. And, I’ve fully embraced the fact that I’m tragically unhip. So, where does that leave me? Well, it leaves me totally open to other people’s suggestions. So, that’s what I sought and that’s what I found. (In fact, while you’re reading this, you can use my SeeqPod searches to preview some of the music I ended up buying.) Well, obviously, I put up a post and a poll about your suggestions, gentle readers. Then, earlier this month, I sent out the call to the same special group of ladies who helped me pick out my most successful pair of shoes which got the best reaction from my favorite member of my target market. When the answer came back from them, I shuffled that in with the wisdom of the crowd here at Diary of a Network Geek and came up with a list. Here it is:

French Kicks – One Time Bells
Snow Patrol – A Hundred Million Suns
Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand
The Ting Tings- We Started Nothing
The Flaming Lips – Maxi-Single – She Don’t Use Jelly
Vampire Weekend – Vampire Weekend
Tokyo Police Club- Elephant Shell
Spoon – Double CD – Soft Effects and Telephono

So, that’s what I got today, in a hurry, at the last minute, to blend in with some of my older stuff, like Elvis Costello and Frank Sinatra and Warren Zevon and Miles Davis and the like, to make a nice mix. Why? Well, because I’m going to have those people over for Thanksgiving and several of them will be people I want to, um, make a good impression on, if you take my meaning. Yeah, this poor, unhip network geek is trying to impress a girl a little bit. And, barring that, I wouldn’t mind impressing a couple of the guys. Different reasons, naturally, but, still, one’s as good as the other, right?

Okay, not really. But, in any case, I just wanted to have some nice, young, hip background music for this little party. Possibly, even music for more parties in the future, too, I might add. Sure, it’s been a lot of work getting ready, and a bit more work before I’m done, but I love entertaining. I love having people over for virtually any reason. And, yes, it’s been the perfect antidote to the poisonous memories from four years ago at this time of year. Instead of feeling depressed and down, I’m feeling up, positive and excited about the upcoming holiday. New memories, happy memories, ready to be made and, I think, this music will help make it better, more memorable and new and fresh, for me.
I’m not quite sure how many people will be coming, but a number of people will be coming after going to their family Thanksgiving celebration, just to hang out and maybe have a slice of pie. Fresh music, new friends, and pie. Sounds like a pretty damn good start to me!

QuantumofSolace

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Quantum of Solace Friday night, but I’m just getting to review it now.

I have to admit, when Daniel Craig was revealed as the newest James Bond, I wasn’t impressed. But, after seeing Casino Royale, my opinion on the subject changed. Dramatically.
Quantum of Solace, in spite of the goofy, contrived title, is, if anything, better than Casino Royale ever thought of being. In fact, unlike all previous Bond movies, this is the first movie that’s not based on a book or story from Ian Fleming.  UPDATE: I’ve been told by a pair of Bond fanatics at work that this is incorrect.  Goldeneye is the first Bond movie not based, at least in part, on an Ian Flemming story of some kind.  This is, however, the first movie that is an obvious and direct sequel that really doesn’t stand entirely on its own. This let the script writers do some things that they might not have been able to do otherwise. For instance, this movie continues from where the last one ended. In fact, it really sort of helps if you see Casino Royale right before going to see Quantum of Solace, because things will make more sense. Honest.

Quantum of Solace starts with Bond running from pursuit by both classic, unnamed “bad guys” and police. It turns out that he’s running because he has Mr. White, who’s responsible for killing Bond’s lady love in Casino Royale, in the trunk of the car.
Mr. White, in classic “War on Terror” fashion is tortured somewhere off UK soil to get information out of him. But, instead of cracking, with the help of a turned agent in MI6, White escapes. Bond, naturally, gives chase. And chases the whole organization through the rest of the movie. Though it’s not clearly identified, I think, Quantum is the name of the vast criminal organization to which Mr. White belongs. Of course, the chase runs through several exotic and beautiful locations, not to mention the two very exotic and beautiful women that Bond meets along the way.
I won’t ruin the movie by revealing the rest of the plot, but there are a few twists and turns that you won’t expect. Also, an homage to earlier Bond films, including Goldfinger. And, there are quite a few car chases and intense action scenes. The villain is a little weak, especially compared to Craig’s Bond. The only thing that wasn’t there were a lot of gadgets. Oh, sure, Bond had a super cell phone and there were some cool computer gadget things, but those are really almost here now, if they aren’t already.

I won’t say this is the best James Bond film ever, but it’s got to be in the top five, for certain. I’d definitely see this again if the opportunity presented itself. And, no matter what anyone says, Daniel Craig makes a great James Bond.
If you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor and go see Quantum of Solace!

Last week, I read Geek Mafia by Rick Dakan.

Though this book wasn’t terrible, I can’t really recommend it to anyone. Look, I applaud anyone who can write a whole book and get it published. Just writing a novel-length work is quite an accomplishment, but that doesn’t make it necessarily good. That’s kind of how I feel about Geek Mafia.
The implication of the title is that the book will somehow link “geeks” with some sort of organized crime, which, to me, usually means La Cosa Nostra, the Mafia. But, the author never really quite manages to accomplish this. The book starts with a comic book artist that’s been working for a game company who’s about to be fired dodging work at the bar of a Mexican restaurant. There he meets an attractive free-lancer of some kind who immediately starts to flirt with him. Now, in the real world, this should have set off bells and whistles in this guy’s head, but it doesn’t. Apparently, we’re supposed to believe that a pudgy, almost middle-aged guy completely buys that a pretty girl more than ten years his junior, who he’s just met, is interested in him and doesn’t have any ulterior motive. I know what I think when that’s what seems to be happening to me. Yeah, right, I don’t believe it could be happening to me, but we should believe that this guy totally buys it. What’s more, we should buy it when it turns out to be true.

Well, this girl volunteers to help him get one over on his company and bluff them into giving him a bunch of money instead of the two months severance they want to give him.  Again, if this were me, I’d be super, super suspicious, but this joker just completely buys it and goes along, until it’s almost too late.  Then, and only then, he gets worried that maybe, just maybe, this girl is too good to be true.
But, all that aside, the writing is just, well, mediocre at best.  The author not only uses all the geek and mystery/heist cliches but he over uses them.  I mean, this guy really piles them on.  In a way, he takes using trite situations and predictable scenarios to an art form.  It’s almost like he was trying to make use of every single scene he was given from a writing class or something.  It was amazingly formulaic, from the various scams to the main character trying to join the criminal crew, right down to one of the criminal crew betraying him and his new lover.

The whole thing works, on one level, but it’s certainly not “Best Seller” material.  It was disappointing in several ways beyond the lackluster writing.  For instance, it never really lived up to either promise in the title.  There was no mafia in the book and, in fact, barely any organized crime to speak of at all.  Nor did it live up to the geek portion, really, either.  Any technology or “geekiness” was merely a plot device seen at a distance, at best, and was really not required to move the story forward at all.  It could have all pretty much been done some other way without any significant impact.  Or, the technology was used at about the same level that pretty much any traveling salesman might use.  Laptops and e-mail and all the normal trappings of modern life, not really geeky at all.
And the characters did all sorts of fairly incongruous things, too.  They were quite inconsistent, even considering their obviously “hidden” agendas.  They were, at times, wholly unbelievable, acting in ways that I cannot imagine any normal, reasonable person acting.  Not even perfectly reasonable criminals.
This whole book read like someone attempting NaNoWriMo for the first time and not doing any editing work to the manuscript afterward!

Frankly, I had a lot of hope for this book.  The title alone led me to expect an entirely different book.  One which I had truly looked forward to reading.  Sadly, what was behind that title was not the book I’d hoped to read.  So, as appealing as the description of this book may seem, I just cannot recommend it to anyone.

Last week, I finished Glasshouse by Charlie Stross.

I’ve been reading a lot more lately than I have in a long, long while. Part of that has included a lot of last year’s award winners. There’s been a lot of really great science-fiction that I haven’t read in recent years and I’m trying to catch up a bit. Glasshouse is one of those.

The title comes from the name of a kind of prison where the inmates are under continuous surveillance. However, the story is about a kind of experiment with partially mind-wiped patients. Ah, but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. The story starts with a man named Robin who has recently undergone a significant surgery, to wipe certain parts of his memory. In fact, he’s undergone a rather radical mind wipe, no doubt driven by a significant trauma. At least, that’s what he supposes, since no one seems to know and, of course, he has no memory. Actually, he has to rely quite a bit on what people tell him and, frankly, a lot of guesswork. So, with that setting as a beginning, Robin explores who he is, why he’s there and why he knows about and is so comfortable with violence.
He quickly meets and gets involved with a woman named Kat. Though, in this future, definitions like “woman” are somewhat flexible. Kat, for instance, has four arms and is blue. And, she’s also gone through a mind-wipe, though not as radical as Robin’s. She convinces Robin to sign up for an experiment, an experiment in politics, sociology and history. The experiment takes the form of a game, of sorts, set in what would roughly be our time that includes constant observation to make sure everyone stays in character in this artificially created time and place. It’s an interesting way to look at gender roles and societal norms of our time, while layering on some other ideas for us to think about. And, of course, nothing is quite what it seems.

I have to admit, even though this won awards and was interesting, it’s not my favorite. I have a couple more by Charlie Stross in my stack of books to be read, and I’ll definitely read them, but I enjoy John Scalzi better. Still, the ideas Stross presented in this book were interesting and good, hard science-fiction. I won’t spoil any plot twists, but he creates a world where people can change gender almost at will and wear pretty modified bodies, too. Also, he portrays a world where, as an outgrowth of the mutable nature of humankind, sex and sexual morality has shifted far from our current standards, even in the most liberal of communities. I like, though, that it all fits together and makes sense internally. Sure you have to suspend disbelief in several instances, but, after that, everything else follows logically. In that respect, Stross is a very good writer, even though his style may not appeal to me. In the end, I’ll read more of his work because I can learn from it, and that’s more than enough reason for me. Also, there’s a fun “inside joke” reference to the Prisoner that made me laugh.

In short, if you’re patient and like so-called hard science-fiction, there’s a lot to like in Glasshouse. It’s well worth finding in paperback and reading.

Hey, wanna’ see something cool?

How about a home-made zombie movie? This is labeled “Episode 1”, which implies they’re going to do more, but it’s been a long time since the first one, so who knows? Until then, though, go enjoy Episode One of We Are Prey.

Seriously, it’s better than some of the stuff that’s made it to DVD. Really!

Quarantine

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I saw Quarantine on Sunday.

This is a dark and disturbing movie and I cannot recommend it to anyone with a weak constitution. It wasn’t scary, per se, but it was surprising, which is a refreshing change for me when it comes to horror films.

The entire movie is filmed in a kind of “Blair Witch” style, but better. It’s all done on a single camera, or point of view. The idea is simple, really, a TV news reporter and her camera man are shadowing a pair of fire-fighters in some unknown urban setting. The entire thing is filmed from that perspective.
The movie starts off simply enough with this reporter filming some intro work and getting to know some of the firemen. It’s all normal, fun stuff, basically a reporting doing a puff piece about the heroic firemen. Then, they get a call.

The firemen that the reporter is shadowing go out on the call and arrive at an old, relatively short, apartment building. They meet a pair of policemen who have called for assistance getting into an apartment where a tenant is believed to be trapped, possibly hurt. They break into her apartment and find an old woman who’s become dangerously ill and, it turns out, violent.
Honestly, at this point, I thought it was going to turn into a standard zombie movie, just in a building, but, well, it turned out to be something more. Not too far into the movie, after it’s established that there’s some sort of illness running through the residents, the CDC and National Guard show up and seal everyone into the building. That’s where the name of the movie comes from, I suppose, the quarantine.
Naturally, in my standard movie review style, I won’t reveal the rest of the plot and spoil it. Let me just say that, even though the plot is simple, it’s handled very well. And, there is a bit of a surprise ending. At least, it was a bit of a surprise to me.

I liked this movie.
It was a little scary, pretty gory, and disturbingly realistic in its portrayal of the events. It does take place mainly in a single four or five story apartment building, but that enhances the whole thing. And, it is filmed from a single camera perspective, but, again, instead of limiting the film, it adds realism and immediacy. The single camera thing also adds a fair bit of suspense and sets up the surprise ending. I really was pleasantly surprised at how effectively that was used in this film.
Also, keep in mind, this isn’t my kind of movie, generally, but I liked the way it was constructed. And, it didn’t disappoint at all. I cannot recommend this film to most of my regular audience, but if you like a good horror movie, this will do quite well this Halloween season.

Quarantine was well worth the matinee price I paid. Even though this wasn’t a zombie movie, if you like them, go see this movie.

This past week, I read Choke by Chuck Palahnuik.

If you can’t quite place the author, think Fight Club, either the book or the movie. Or, you may have seen the ads for the film that is being made about this book. As I recall, it’ll be out by the end of the year and will star Sam Rockwell.
Frankly, I doubt the movie will compare to the book, mainly, because if it did, they’d get an NC-17 rating, at least. The book follows Victor Mancini, a failed medical student and mediocre historical reenactor, who is struggling with having his mother in a full-service nursing home. She needs to be there, though, not just because she’s old and infirm, but also quite deranged. Most times, when Victor comes to visit her, she doesn’t even recognize him.

The book opens with Victor having sex in the bathroom of a church, the ladies room, actually, instead of attending a 12 step meeting. Naturally, he’s having sex with a woman out on a three-hour release from, one assumes, prison or a psych ward, and he signs her release form, claiming to be her sponsor. The meeting they’re skipping is for sex addicts. This becomes a running theme throughout the book: addiction. Habits. Sex. All big themes. All making this a very adult book.
But, beyond his problem with sex and women, Victor needs money. It’s not cheap keeping his mother in that full-service nursing home and every procedure costs extra. That’s why Victor dropped out of medical school and moved back home. It’s also why he works at the early Colonial reenactment town, trying to get enough money to scrape by. Somewhere along the way, Victor hits on the idea of choking in restaurants as a way to avoid the bill and he discovers that when people save him it makes them feel like heroes. It also makes some of them feel responsible for him and, out of a perverse need to take care of him, they send him money. Money, and a birthday card on the anniversary of having saved his life. It’s this subplot, really, that gives the book it’s name. If Palahnuik had named the book for what it was about, really, it would have been titled “Sex Addict Living In Denial”.

I have to admit, in many ways, though, I felt a certain resonance with Victor. He found himself in the grips of compulsions that he simply didn’t have the means to control. He lost himself, quite literally, it turns out, in yet another subplot, wherein he finds out the identity of his real father. And, for that matter, his mother, too. He’s just a poor sap, who’s had everything turn to crap before his very eyes and, now, is trying to make the best of it with a very limited skill-set and some truly messed up thinking.
His mother is an interesting character, too. She’s some kind of revolutionary activist who gets thrown in jail repeatedly and then escapes to find Victor and lead him on yet another crazy adventure meant to raise society’s conscious, or some such nonsense. It never really works out the way she plans, and neither does poor Victor.

Well, again, I won’t ruin the book by telling you anything more significant of the plot, but it is a very wild ride. I’m sure the movie will be interesting, but not half as good as the book.
So, if you’re over sixteen, well, maybe over eighteen, then read the book

BurnAfterReading

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

Okay, so I saw two totally different movies this weekend.

I’m going to review them in reverse order, actually.
Sunday, at the earliest matinee, I saw Burn After Reading. Now, I have to admit, I went into this with pretty high expectations because, after all, it is a Coen Brothers’ film. Also, from the trailers, I was expecting a total comedy. Well, I’ll say this, I was certainly not sad that I went to see this film. And, it was very, very funny. But, it wasn’t really a comedy.

The story, in a nutshell, is this… Osborne Cox, a CIA analyst gets demoted, but quits in protest. His wife, a castrating bitch, is cheating on him, but also wants a divorce. He starts writing a memoir, which she copies to a disk along with a bunch of financial information to bring to her lawyer. Somehow, the disk gets, well, lost and falls into the wrong hands. In this case, the “wrong hands” is the staff at a health club, each of whom are messed up in their own way.
And, that’s just the first thirty minutes, or less, of the film! Oh, and that’s all without any of the subplots that all become hugely important later. It’s very much like Fargo, in all the best ways, even including a lot of the cast from Fargo, in fact.

Well, as always, without revealing any significant plot spoilers, let me say that this was a good movie, albeit complicated, convoluted and quirky. Of course, it is a Coen Brothers’ film, so I guess that’s to be expected.
The thing is, from the advertising and the trailers, I thought this would be mostly a comedy, but it’s not. Really, I’m not sure what it is, outside of being different and good. Well, it is funny, too, it’s just not full-out comedy. I mean, it’s better than that. It’s kind of hard to explain.
Okay, let’s just summarize and let me say that it’s worth paying full price to see this movie, and I almost never pay full price to see a movie any more.

Now, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is an entirely different animal.
As I wrote on Flickr, guys, if you take a date to see this movie and you didn’t get laid? Duder, you are doing something seriously wrong. I am not kidding.

Okay, look, I’ll admit it. I have a secret weakness for romantic comedies that are heavy on the romantic. Nick and Norah is such a film. It may not win any Oscars, but, if I had to pick a must-see movie, behind Dark Knight, of course, this would be it.
Two kids, seniors in different high schools in the greater New York area, have a mutual acquaintance in common. Nick’s ex-girlfriend and Norah’s arch-nemesis. They also share a love of music, which is featured through out the film.
Nick, the only straight member of an otherwise gay band, finds himself dragged out in search of a mythical band “Where’s Fluffy?” as he tries to recover from being dumped. Norah, a nice girl with a couple of self-image issues, gets dragged out to take care of a friend who invariably ends up drunk and, of course, by the lure of finding “Where’s Fluffy?”. Somewhere in the middle, they meet and…

Well, in my fine tradition of not ruining films I review with spoilers, I’m not going to tell you if they actually get together by the end of the film. But, let me reinforce that guys, if you are even the slightest bit nice, kind, sweet, gentlemanly, caring sort of guy that Michael Cera plays? This movie should pretty well make any normal, romantic, sweet, “bring her home to meet the parents” sort of girl you ought to be dating totally melt. As long as it’s your idea first, not hers, and you totally buy into the romance of this flick. You have GOT to believe it, brothers, or it will not fly.
But, uh, yeah, I need to find a date while this movie is still in the damn theaters. Like, pronto.

It’s been a great year for movies so far, and the rest of the year looks pretty good, too.
Stay tuned for more reviews. Oh, and another book review later in the week, too.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Sticking to good habits is like having a savings account: when hard times come, we can take the 'investment' we've made and overcome our problems."

I finished Little Brother by Cory Doctorow this weekend.

I cannot recommend this book enough. It is so, so worth braving the Young Adult section of the bookstore or library to get and definitely worth getting for your own young adults. Don’t be put off by the fact that it’s geared toward a younger audience, because there’s actually a bit more sex in it than most science-fiction I’ve read this year! Seriously!
Little Brother, in short, is about the Department of Homeland Security. Not quite the way it is now, but where it might be going if we’re not careful. The story is about a somewhat precoscious teen named Marcus who’s a bit of a geek. He plays live-action role-playing games and works with computers and subverts his school’s security measures to get out of class to play alternate reality games. But, he and several of his friends get caught up in a bad situation while doing this one day. In the story, terrorists blow up the Bay Bridge in San Francisco while Marcus and his friends are skipping school. And, the DHS sweeps them up with other questionable people and interrogates them.
Frankly, the interrogation techniques are probably what you’ve read about already. Simple humiliation by not being allowed to use bathroom facilities, sleep deprivation, isolation, aggressive and extended questioning sessions, you know, the usual. The kinds of things that are used all the time to get information out of alleged terrorists. Only Marcus isn’t a terrorist and he hasn’t even been charged with a crime. The DHS is only questioning him because he seems a little suspicious and out of the ordinary. You know, the usual. The usual nightmare that anyone in the wrong place at the wrong time just being a regular, normal citizen might go through because we’re handing over our freedoms with the idea that we might gain security in exchange.

Well, they release Marcus and two of this three friends. Marcus got the worst of the questioning, but all of them are worried about their missing friend. Only Marcus, he’s gotten angry at how he was treated. Much the way I imagine many otherwise innocent people have gotten angry at how they’ve been treated or “questioned”. So, Marcus decides he’s going to get back at the DHS. And, thanks to his talents as a young computer hacker, he does.

I won’t ruin the story by telling you all that happens, but it is a gripping read, not lessened by the fact that it’s something which could happen right here in our country. In fact, some people feel it is happening. One of the many things I liked about this book was how accurate the computer security was. Doctorow really researched this well and even called in contacts like the infamous Bruce Schneier to help get it right. As a matter of fact, they get it so right that I’d recommend this book to anyone interested in getting the basics of computer security. They explain public key cryptography, protocol tunneling, and several other key concepts in modern computer security that, frankly, are somewhat hard to explain.
If you’re worried about the future of your country, or just the future of your children, I encourage you to read this book. If you want to encourage the next generation to be politically aware and have a good understanding of the issues, buy this book for them.

I may not always agree with Cory Doctorow’s political agenda, but Little Brother is a great book and will provide many topics of discussion for interested classes and families.
Read this book!