DUE TO THE ONGOING PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH GOOGLE ANALYTICS WHICH HAVE PREVENTED ME FROM EDITING OR POSTING TO MY OWN BLOGS ON BLOGGER USING MY HOME COMPUTERS, I HAVE SET UP A NEW BLOG AT
http://sanddreamingofstars.wordpress.com/
IN ADDITION TO POSTING NEW MATERIAL, I'M SELECTING MY FAVORITE BITS FROM THE OTHER TWO BLOGS AND GRADUALLY MOVING THEM OVER, RATHER THAN JUST PORTING EVERYTHING OVER.
I'VE ALSO BEEN EDITING THE MATERIAL THAT I'VE REPOSTED TO MAKE IT SHORTER AND TIGHTER, EXCEPT FOR STORIES.
THE EMPHASIS OF THE NEW SAND DREAMING OF STARS BLOG IS ON BOOK REVIEWS, POEMS, VIGNETTES, AND STORIES. NO POLITICS, NO TWITTER-ESQUE OR FACEBOOK-STYLE PERSONAL UPDATES, NO STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. I'D LIKE TO POST ONLY MATERIAL THAT I'VE GIVEN SOME THOUGHT TO AND EDITED AT LEAST ONCE.
I'M ALSO GOING TO BE EMBEDDING LINKS AT THE BOTTOM OF POSTS, RATHER THAN THROUGHOUT, TO TRY AND AVOID THE DISTRACTION THAT STUMBLING OVER A LINK IN THE MIDDLE OF A SENTENCE AND DECIDING WHETHER TO CLICK IT OR NOT CAN CAUSE.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Google Analytics Has Killed All My Pages
I'm writing this using Internet Explorer on the Acer of Doom, our only (currently) functioning Windows system, because I can no longer update blog posts using Safari, Firefox, or Google Chrome, because Google Analytics, which I enabled for both my blogs and my google site web page, is causing an error. I can't even load the web site; I was unable to update the blogs, IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT I DELETED THE GOOGLE ANALYTICS CODE FROM THE TEMPLATE AND DELETED ALL THREE SITES FROM THE GOOGLE ANALYTICS PAGE.
I should be able to view and modify my own work, but I can't and haven't been able to for days. No warnings from Google, no useful advice at all on how to deal with the problem, nada. On a level of one to ten, I'm at an eight or nine. Someone else has basically taken control of my content by taking it out of my hands due to a technical glitch. I don't know how to fix it, only that I've wasted two hours today already looking into it.
This is how technology works, or fails to work. It promises you all sorts of added functionality, then bombs out on providing even the basic stuff. And then it calls to you to waste your time or alter your behavior just so you can try to keep it running.
I should be able to view and modify my own work, but I can't and haven't been able to for days. No warnings from Google, no useful advice at all on how to deal with the problem, nada. On a level of one to ten, I'm at an eight or nine. Someone else has basically taken control of my content by taking it out of my hands due to a technical glitch. I don't know how to fix it, only that I've wasted two hours today already looking into it.
This is how technology works, or fails to work. It promises you all sorts of added functionality, then bombs out on providing even the basic stuff. And then it calls to you to waste your time or alter your behavior just so you can try to keep it running.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Book Review: The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason
The Lost Books of the Odyssey purports to be a collection of lost stories from Homer's Odyssey, all of which are variants on the events in the "official" version of the epic tale. It also claims to be a novel, right there on the cover.
Neither of these claims are true. The book was a remarkable read, however, filled with beautiful and thought-provoking imagery. It's a new book, I have to turn it back in soon, but I've held onto it in case I want to read through one of the stories again.
If you like Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Paulo Coehlo, perhaps some Stanislaw Lem, I think you'll like Zachary Mason. He has the same deft magic realist touch, the imagination that is both vivid and thoughtful, and a way of crafting brief passages that draw you into a mood and setting with ease.
Why isn't a novel? Well, I think the simplest explanation I can offer is that if you can pick up a book and start reading any chapter at random without feeling as though you missed anything that came before or learned anything that helps you understand the events described in following chapters, then that book doesn't have a narrative structure that you can consider a novel. It is so unlike a novel that I don't know why they bothered with the label at all.
The Lost Books of the Odyssey is a collection of vignettes, pastiches, contemplations, or what have you on the underlying themes of the Odyssey, a re-imagining of many different scenes, several of them more than once, as well as a depiction of many different possible individuals named Odysseus. It's quite hard to describe, yet I think you can pick up a copy, read one of the shorter chapters that is just one or two or three pages in length, and come away with a sense of how the entire project feels. You can sample the first two chapters by clicking the Look Inside option at the other end of the Amazon link above.
Neither of these claims are true. The book was a remarkable read, however, filled with beautiful and thought-provoking imagery. It's a new book, I have to turn it back in soon, but I've held onto it in case I want to read through one of the stories again.
If you like Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Paulo Coehlo, perhaps some Stanislaw Lem, I think you'll like Zachary Mason. He has the same deft magic realist touch, the imagination that is both vivid and thoughtful, and a way of crafting brief passages that draw you into a mood and setting with ease.
Why isn't a novel? Well, I think the simplest explanation I can offer is that if you can pick up a book and start reading any chapter at random without feeling as though you missed anything that came before or learned anything that helps you understand the events described in following chapters, then that book doesn't have a narrative structure that you can consider a novel. It is so unlike a novel that I don't know why they bothered with the label at all.
The Lost Books of the Odyssey is a collection of vignettes, pastiches, contemplations, or what have you on the underlying themes of the Odyssey, a re-imagining of many different scenes, several of them more than once, as well as a depiction of many different possible individuals named Odysseus. It's quite hard to describe, yet I think you can pick up a copy, read one of the shorter chapters that is just one or two or three pages in length, and come away with a sense of how the entire project feels. You can sample the first two chapters by clicking the Look Inside option at the other end of the Amazon link above.
Book Review: The Trade of Queens
The Trade of Queens is the sixth and supposedly concluding book in the Merchant Princes series. If you haven't read the earlier books, this one will confuse the hell out of you, regardless of all the efforts to update people on the plot. I found those little summaries of what has happened so far useful to keep up and I've read the other five novels, just not in a short span of time.
Essentially it's a very well thought-out, highly realistic story of alternate worlds whose events and conflicts hinge largely upon differences in economics, politics, social customs, and concepts of law. That sounds dry, but the story isn't--it moves at breakneck speed, with a large cast of characters. Stross does a really nice job of delineating the differences a subtly different America circa 2003, the Norse colonized Gruinmarkt of the world-walking Clan, and the world of New Britain.
I'm particularly impressed at how smoothly Stross moves through complicated nomenclature and jargon within various subcultures. It's a fun series and this is a decent novel, but as my comment above might suggest, Stross has SO many balls up in the air at this point, so many plotlines going on multiple worlds, that this actually feels a bit rushed and doesn't feel that much like the series has ended. By the standards of some of the earlier cliffhangers in the series, this one wraps up, but there's still so much left to be decided.
I also feel the book suffers from Stross resolving too many of the conflicts that he poses too quickly; there isn't enough time for the tension to really build in many cases. The series is still well worth a read, in my view, and if you do you'll eventually want to know how some of the major plotlines pan out, which is the goal of this novel.
Essentially it's a very well thought-out, highly realistic story of alternate worlds whose events and conflicts hinge largely upon differences in economics, politics, social customs, and concepts of law. That sounds dry, but the story isn't--it moves at breakneck speed, with a large cast of characters. Stross does a really nice job of delineating the differences a subtly different America circa 2003, the Norse colonized Gruinmarkt of the world-walking Clan, and the world of New Britain.
I'm particularly impressed at how smoothly Stross moves through complicated nomenclature and jargon within various subcultures. It's a fun series and this is a decent novel, but as my comment above might suggest, Stross has SO many balls up in the air at this point, so many plotlines going on multiple worlds, that this actually feels a bit rushed and doesn't feel that much like the series has ended. By the standards of some of the earlier cliffhangers in the series, this one wraps up, but there's still so much left to be decided.
I also feel the book suffers from Stross resolving too many of the conflicts that he poses too quickly; there isn't enough time for the tension to really build in many cases. The series is still well worth a read, in my view, and if you do you'll eventually want to know how some of the major plotlines pan out, which is the goal of this novel.
Book Review: The Yard Dog by Sheldon Russell
The Yard Dog is a mystery set in the area surrounding a Nazi prisoner of war camp in the middle of nowhere in Oklahoma during WW II. Thousands of Nazi prisoners were brought to the US during the war and held in such camps. The main characters include Hook Runyon, a one-armed railroad detective (or "yard dog"), Runt Wallace, a young man with a twisted spine and legs, Dr. Reina Kaplan, a Jewish academic in charge of the program aimed at reeducating the Nazis while they are being held, and a number of other eccentric folks.
The plot revolves around Hook's efforts to investigate the death of a mentally challenged bum who lived around the railyards. As far as mysteries go, the clues build up very slowly and rather haphazardly, with different characters coming across bits of evidence, so the plot drifts a bit, even though the book isn't that long. The payoff is pretty good, but the journey there doesn't build up as much suspense as I would like. Sometimes the narrative voice explaining the thoughts in the characters' heads feels a little forced and cliched as well.
But the dialogue just crackles off the page, quick-witted and very believable, and the period setting is sketched out with sharp, sure details that really bring it to life. Though I lived many years in Texas and have absolutely no love for Oklahoma, it was really engaging. I genuinely liked many of the key characters by the time the story was finished. Another read I stumbled across just by browsing the shelves in the public library, and I'm glad I did.
Its implied that this will be the first in a series of stories about Hook Runyon and I'll look for sequels, on the assumption that plotting is something that an author can get a little sharper with, but establishing a voice and creating an engaging setting are good skills to build upon. Plus, the idea of Hook, who lives in a caboose, traveling to some different period locales doing his work for the railroad has promise, as long as Russell keeps his focus on some of these lost stories and places from the time.
The plot revolves around Hook's efforts to investigate the death of a mentally challenged bum who lived around the railyards. As far as mysteries go, the clues build up very slowly and rather haphazardly, with different characters coming across bits of evidence, so the plot drifts a bit, even though the book isn't that long. The payoff is pretty good, but the journey there doesn't build up as much suspense as I would like. Sometimes the narrative voice explaining the thoughts in the characters' heads feels a little forced and cliched as well.
But the dialogue just crackles off the page, quick-witted and very believable, and the period setting is sketched out with sharp, sure details that really bring it to life. Though I lived many years in Texas and have absolutely no love for Oklahoma, it was really engaging. I genuinely liked many of the key characters by the time the story was finished. Another read I stumbled across just by browsing the shelves in the public library, and I'm glad I did.
Its implied that this will be the first in a series of stories about Hook Runyon and I'll look for sequels, on the assumption that plotting is something that an author can get a little sharper with, but establishing a voice and creating an engaging setting are good skills to build upon. Plus, the idea of Hook, who lives in a caboose, traveling to some different period locales doing his work for the railroad has promise, as long as Russell keeps his focus on some of these lost stories and places from the time.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
My Superhero RPG site
Been spending a bunch of my free time lately working on material for an original superhero setting, adapted to the new superhero roleplaying game ICONS.
You can check it out here if so inclined.
You can check it out here if so inclined.
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