The Android's Dream

I had an Amazon gift certificate (thanks Mom!) so I splurged and bought a batch of John Scalzi books - The Android's Dream, The Ghost Brigades, The Sagan Diary, and The Last Colony (apparently he's fond of definite articles). I've read the first three (plus rereading Old Man's War)but I think I'm going to hold off reviewing the OMW books until Ifinish the trilogy. (Super quick comment: I'm glad I didn't read TGB until TLC came out because the first book had a nice solid ending but the second book makes me reach for the third.)

I can talk about The Android's Dream since it is stand-alone. (Well, there's a sequel coming out next year, but the book stands alone at the moment.) It has a much different tone than Old Man's War, the universe is certainly much more light-hearted than the Colonial Union. Plus as anyone who reads the Whatever knows, the first chapter is an extended fart-joke. It's hard to take that anywhere too serious.

I'll stay away from spoilers but in general it involves, as Scalzi puts it, "a human diplomat who solved intergalactic crises through the use of action scenes and snappy dialogue." That's pretty much what you get and it's clear that we haven't seen the last of Harry Creek as we turn the final page of the book. The story stands alone but you can see clearly how it sets up a series of Harry Creek being a loose troubleshooter/ombudsman around the galaxy.

Scalzi is fast becoming one of my favorite "lite" authors - and I don't mean that in any sort of negative sense. I read The Android's Dream in pretty much one extended sitting and it was a refreshing sort of quick book. The pace is brisk and it doesn't get bogged down in exposition. The universe is quickly sketched in and from there it's just a fun-ride until the end. It's a popcorn book, and it doesn't make any pretensions of being anything else. But it's a good popcorn book.

The one thing I'd say that is a little odd is the whole Philip K. Dick connection. (The title is a reference to "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", and the cover has a sheep theme, and sheep are an actual plot point.) It's a little contrived, and it's a strange connection to make, because the story really has nothing in common with Dick's work that I see. But never judge a book by it's title. Or something. Anyway, this is a nit. Just don't dig around for the link to Dick's work and you'll be fine.

If you're looking for a simple, fun read with just enough science fiction to be silly then I'd recommend taking a look at The Android's Dream.

technorati tags:JohnScalzi, TheAndroidsDream, BookReview, ScienceFiction

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Planet Earth Sharkwatch: Episode "Shallow Seas"

This is not a good episode for selachophobes. There are a few drive-by pictures of sharks, but be wary when the get to the part about the big-ass manta ray. There's a quick reference to some minor shark, but then they cut to a great white eating up on some seals. It's a relatively quick set, but there's a few "look at all the teeth!" shots. You have been warned.

technorati tags:PlanetEarth, sharks, selachophobia

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Dang - Beat To The Punch

The unanswered question in all this is: Has anyone told the president? As recently as last week, a White House spokesperson reiterated Bush's "full confidence" in the troubled bureaucrat, stating that the president believes Wolfowitz "has done a very good job at the World Bank." Maybe compared to the Iraq debacle, but not in the eyes of World Bank staffers, who depicted a leadership in distress even before the current scandal blew up.

The Blog | Robert Scheer: Heck of a Job, Wolfie | The Huffington Post

I was going to post about this "full confidence" quote and tie it up to saying that of course Bush has "full confidence" in Wolfowitz - he's done a "heck of a job" both in Iraq "planning" in finding corruption at the World Bank. ("I is in ur bank, paying my gurlfriendz.") Besides, name *one* instance of Bush changing his opinion on anybody based on facts. He doesn't need facts - he has both a gut AND a higher father!

Sadly, while I was trying to find the news story with the best combination of direct Bush quote and being site-reasonably-likely-to-not-be-denounced-as-partisan I realized I had been beaten to the punch. Dang. (And for the record, no I don't consider Huffington Post a site-reasonably-likely-to-not-be-denounced-as-partisan, but this is the link that directly connects the two concepts, so there you go.)

technorati tags:Wolfowitz, WorldBank

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Painkiller Jane - A Swing And A Miss!

Last night I watched the series pilot for Sci-Fi channel's new show: Painkiller Jane. It wasn't terrible by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn't good either. I'm not familiar with the comic book, but the world-building seemed shallow to me - all "Neuros" (the mutants of the show) were up to no good. There was some technobabble about how this was because the mutation affected the brain's ability to tell right from wrong, but that's weak sauce and it justifies the overly simplistic black/white division into secret government organization (the good guys) fighting the mutants (the bad guys).

Throw in Kristanna Loken's wooden delivery and it's not a winner (in Terminator 3 her delivery made sense - she's a terminator. When she's a (presumably human) DEA agent it's less believable). The worst part of it the only time she showed any plausible emotion is when she was in pain - but wait, I thought she was immune to pain? Throw in the terrible writing of the voiceovers  and it's not a winner - the line where she says "I didn't just overcome pain - I murdered it." was especially awful but not unique. It took me a couple of episodes of Dresden Files to decide it wasn't going to get better, but I'm ready to give up on this one after the pilot.

But hey, Eureka comes back in July, and Heroes finally resumes next week (yay!). So the short-term prognosis for televised sci-fi ain't that bad!

technorati tags:SciFi, Television, PainkillerJane

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More on Backups

So a while back I talked about my backup plans and software. But that was before I got the backup drive for Tiny God. It turns out that Acronis won't back up the Boot Camp drive. I'm not quite sure why - there's something about how the drive is partitioned. And furthermore, once I had the external drive formatted Parallels wouldn't boot would the drive attached, it complained about my "non-standard" configuration.

So I poked around some. First off, there's this thread over at Parallels about how to run Boot Camp with multiple partitions. So fixing the "no boot" problem is easy - change the line that reads:

Disk 0:0 image = Boot Camp

to

Disk 0:0 image = Boot Camp;disk0s3

(obviously your string will vary)

But the removable drive is not visible in XP (through Parallels). So to fix that you add:

Disk 1:0 enabled = 1

Disk 1:0 = 1

Disk 1:0 media = 1

Disk 1:0 connected = 1

Disk 1:0 image = Boot Camp;disk2s2

Disk 1:0 cylinders = 0

and remove the two lines that read:

Disk 1:0 enabled = 0


Disk 1:0 = 0

This works - Parallels will run and both drives are mounted and look like "internal IDE" drives to Acronis. So Acronis will back up the C drive.

There may be issues - the backup is running now but it claims it's going to take 11 hours. Also I suspect Parallels isn't going to run if the drive is powered off. The second one is probably solvable - I can probably make two different Parallels files. But if the performance is sucky I'll have to revisit. I'd much prefer to back up in the native XP install anyway. We'll have to see

technorati tags:backups, software, Acronis, BootCamp, Parallels

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