The old blog, active from 2006 through 2012.
Sony VAIO Bloatware
Pursuant to my earlier post about all the unnecessary crapware pre-loaded on my new Sony VAIO laptop… I found a way to get a list of all the stuff that Sony loaded this thing up with, above and beyond Windows. You just open the Sony Recovery Center, and click the option to reinstall some of your programs and drivers from the recovery disks. Here’s the list. The entries with asterisks (*) are trialware. The bolded... Continue reading→
My New Sony VAIO Laptop
A few days ago, I purchased a brand new Sony VAIO VGN-FZ140E notebook computer from the local Circuit City. It almost matches an Apple MacBook Pro for the coolness factor, even if it does come loaded with tons of unnecessary bloatware. Continue reading→
Revisiting Middle Earth: “Unfinished Tales”
There's something both satisfying and frustrating about "Unfinished Tales," a posthumous collection of J.R.R. Tolkien fetishism. You get JRRT at his most didactic, listing chronologies of imaginary kingships as if he were tracing the lineage of Jesus. You get Christopher Tolkien at his most pompous, pointing out all of the petty differences between versions of his father's stories in lots of dry footnotes. Continue reading→
Introductory Science Fiction Books for Literary Readers
In my post a while back about bad Infoquake reviews, I mentioned how I’ve given William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Frank Herbert’s Dune to a few friends as a way to introduce them to quality science fiction, only to hear later that these friends didn’t care for them. Some of the commenters in the aforementioned blog article didn’t care much for Neuromancer or Dune either. So my question today is: what are some quality SF books... Continue reading→
Revisiting Middle Earth: “The Children of Húrin”
“A darkness lies behind us, and out of it few tales have come,” says one character early in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Children of Húrin. “…It may be that we fled from the fear of the Dark, only to find it here before us, and nowhere else to fly to but the Sea.” Sador is speaking here about the race of Men, and his statement may sum up Tolkien’s recently published novel as good as any.... Continue reading→
“Infoquake” Nominated for John W. Campbell Award
Holy auspicious awards, Batman! My debut novel "Infoquake" has been nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best Novel! Continue reading→
Revisiting Middle Earth: “The Return of the King”
A single theme kept running through my head as I read j.R.R. Tolkien's "The Return of the King." It's the way evil acts continually redound to the greater good in the end. Continue reading→
Revisiting Middle Earth: “The Two Towers”
Many people who read "The Lord of the Rings" falter somewhere in "The Two Towers," and that's perfectly understandable. It's a difficult book about moral choice and the temptations of good and evil. Continue reading→
Hacked (And Not in That Cool Cyberpunk Kind of Way)
If you tried to visit my blog and/or my website this morning — or tried to read any of the feeds — you were likely greeted by a string of gibberish. (I mean, more gibberish than you usually find here.) If you were using an older browser or a browser with ludicrously bad security settings, you might have been directed to a series of IFRAMEs that led you to somewhere in the .ru domain. No,... Continue reading→
Revisiting Middle Earth: “The Fellowship of the Ring”
Ideally one should write about the three books of The Lord of the Rings as a unit, since that’s the way J.R.R. Tolkien wrote them. It was the publisher’s decision to split the novel into three parts, a decision that the author only grudgingly accepted. He wanted LOTR published in six parts, with book 1 called The Return of the Shadow, and book 2 called The Fellowship of the Ring. But more importantly, in an... Continue reading→