I've been reading Accelerando, though I bought my copy from Amazon instead of reading the online version. :-) Partly this is because this book is an important part of corporate culture at the small startup I'm now working at.

It is a very strange book. I've read bits and pieces of it before as short stories. It's very disconnected and random in ( Read more... )

And much of it was technically accurate (well, there is no decent explanation for the situations when there is gravity (or some facsimile thereof) vs. when there isn't) as far as it went, but it suffered from two major problems... mediocre acting and stupid crazy 'artsy' camera work and effects. I suppose I should be grateful because the run-of- ( Read more... )

This movie is the most cliché ridden piece of trash I have ever been fooled into watching thinking that it might actually be good. It isn't that the movie is awful. It's pretty good for what it is. But what it is is not by any stretch of the imagination a good movie.

It is a football movie. The brave and somehow special band who undergo tests ( Read more... )

This movie was described to me as bloody, and brutal with a lot of squicky scenes.

I guess you can say all those things. But I found it to be profoundly sad and beautiful all at the same time. I thought that was more important than any blood, brutality or squick. Even though the movie has plenty of all of those things. All of those elements, ( Read more... )

I went to see "Syriana" last night with rainonthewind and a friend of ours named Pete. It was an excellent movie. The director of "Traffic" has done it again.

It was a gritty look at a fictional oil industry and middle east. Like "Traffic", it is likely closer to the truth than not. The filming style and script make it hard to remember that the film is ( Read more... )

I finished the book I talked about before, "The Success of Open Source", and I'm slightly less enthused with the book than I was before, though I still think it is an excellent book.

It's partly that the book is out-of-date. The author talks about companies that are now largely commercial failures. The author also talks about companies that are ( Read more... )

I've been reading this excellent book called "The Success of Open Source". It's an attempt to dissect why Open Source development seems to work, despite that fact that it seems like an economic anomaly.

The author had an really interesting insight. He's been examining why each individual finds it beneficial to contribute. He's gone through a ( Read more... )

I got two computer books today:

1. C++ Template Metaprogramming
2. Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment (second edition)

The first is everything I expected, and it's a really excellent book. It's one of those books that either leave people shaking their heads, wondering why on earth anybody in their right mind would even think of using C++, or ( Read more... )

I went to see it today. I went to the earliest matinee to make sure I could get a seat. rainonthewind humored me and accompanied me instead of insisting on going out and doing something to enjoy the sunshine. :-)

It was a disappointment. They tried hard to remain true to the book, but somehow they lost it. And the plot changes they made to make it more ( Read more... )

I watched Sin City with rainonthewind yesterday. It was... hard to describe. Gritty and filled with callous violence. Lots grotesque, disgusting and macabre imagery.

OTOH, there were people who I could care about, who seemed like good people to me. It didn't suffer from the Pulp Fiction evil of largely having no characters who you could believe were worth ( Read more... )