A Maze of Death (P. K. Dick)

Some authors you just love reading because they transport you away into another real world. As a writer, you need imagination and creativity to create a completely new world, and it usually ends up being something that is entirely invented – the more bizarre, the better. Take Tolkien, for example, or even Calvino.

Not so for Philip K. Dick. His science fiction novels mostly entail worlds that are “real” – they play in some distant future, but they have all the ugliness and baseness of our own world. Usually it is a catastrophe that forms the background of the story, something that humans have done to themselves. And on this background, Dick paints a subtle portrait of people just trying to survive, struggling to make ends meet, and somehow they always manage to touch the sublime with a fingertip, before they have to let go again.

Coffee places in SoMa

I’ve been living here for about two months, and I have now visited my share of coffee places in SoMa. The following is a brief summary of my recollections – constantly updated as I find new places.

First of all, there is no dearth of choices here South of Market. The neighbourhood caters to two classical coffee addicts and is crowded with caffeine spigots. Yuppies need the jolt to get their head spinning all the time, and time wasters just have time to hang out, and coffee is just the excuse.

Mediocrity

One of the things that has always puzzled me is just how adverse a reaction you can get to anything average. You’d think that something average would be ok – I mean, how could it possibly be bad to be like everyone else?

Instead, in all languages I speak, there is a common thread: words that indicate averageness have negative connotations. Let’s see: mediocre (from Latin medius, middle); average; common; durchschnittlich (German for average). Even the very negative “mean” has a cognate that indicates averageness.

2008-03-13 Deviant Party

Review: Kirkwood

{moszoomimglink:Cornice}Of all the resorts in the Tahoe area, Kirkwood has been consistently cited by friends as the one with the best snow. It is indeed in an odd location, about 40 minutes South of South Lake Tahoe, all by itself. The slopes face the East, which means they are shielded from the fierce West winds that bring all the powder with the winter storms.

I had not gone in the four years I had been snowboarding: I had always relied on season passes, and it seemed foolish to pay extra tickets and then go to a place so far off. Indeed, those that love Kirkwood all say that it doesn’t have anything going on outside the slopes, unlike SLT, where you don’t get bored no matter what time of the year.

Back from Tahoe

{moszoomimglink:Advanced only in Squaw}Back from another snowboarding trip – this time to beautiful (though powderless) Lake Tahoe. It was the first time since I was a beginner that I went to Squaw Valley, and the first time ever in Kirkwood – and now I understand all the raving about the two resorts.

2008-03-02 Snowboarding Tahoe

Progress on Component

Well, the feedback has abated quite a lot, but views and downloads of the component are still going strong. We are at 1,327 views and 150 downloads – so far, no new complaints, but no comments either.

What does an open source developer do to get more feedback? Well, maybe start by putting out some feedback of my own. Here are a few things I’d like to see in com_weight:

First Feedback on Released Component

We’ve had 963 views and 87 downloads of the component. So far, so good, considering it has been up for just a day. In addition, I received comments and feedback from two people: one that complained the frontend didn’t work (I am trying to resolve the issue), and one that wanted to extend the component to do more things than just track weight.

I sent the first one screenshots of the interface, the second one hints as to what needs to be done, and now I am thinking: gosh, shouldn’t I post those screenshots? Shouldn’t I add an FAQ or something?

12 Monkeys (1995)

After the disaster of {moscontentlink:The Running Man}, 12 Monkeys is a welcome contrast. Directed by Terry Gilliam, of Brazil fame, this movie explores the thin boundary between sanity and madness and applies it to one of the most confusing topics of science fiction: time travel.

James Cole (Bruce Willis) is a “divergent mind,” a criminal that gets a chance to save the world after a virus wiped out 90% of mankind. He is to go back to the year 1996, when the virus first spread, to collect samples of the unadulterated virus. He is to bring these samples back, so that scientists can create an antidote, cure, or the like.