CNet in the UK picked Vista as one of its ‘Top Ten Terrible Tech Products‘ — and the products on this list stretch back many years: Any operating system that provokes a campaign for its predecessor’s reintroduction deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that quietly has a downgrade-to- previous-edition option introduced […]
I just finished reading House to House: An Epic Memoir of War by SSG David Bellavia (with John R. Bruning). Bellavia took part in the US battle for Fallujah (Iraq) in November 2004; his squad was one of the first to enter the city, in which insurgents had spent months entrenching themselves and booby-trapping much […]
It is common in “serious” reviews of J. K. Rowling’s works to start with disclaimers regarding her writing — awkward, overly long, inconsistent, filled with excessive and irrelevant details about this ‘magic’ world, and so on. Give me a break. Rowling has managed to create one of the greatest phenomenons in the history of literature, […]
I can thank my old friend and, at the time, fellow BYU computer science undergrad Mark Savon for setting me on the path of having seen every Star Wars film on opening day. Mark told me about this nifty new movie that was coming out, Star Wars, and suggested we double-date (with our wives) to […]
I have been fortunate enough to pick up an Apple TV this past weekend, and like a good nerd, spent a vast amount of time tinkering with it. There has been some interest and breathless anticipation waiting for this latest Apple gizmo to pop out of the Cupertino womb. Is it the “next big thing”? […]
The Vance Integral Edition (VIE) is one of the more remarkable publishing feats of the last 50 years. It is a 44-volume set of the complete works of Jack Vance, corrected and restored (as far as possible) to the author’s original manuscripts and titles with the direct help and cooperation of Jack Vance and his […]
I sit to write this, having just moments ago finished Blue at the Mizzen, the 20th and final volume in Patrick O’Brian’s “Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin” series. This is my second time through all 20 novels — I enjoyed it even more than the first time. I am once again grateful that Patrick O’Brian lived long […]
Go tell the Spartans
[Welcome to those coming over from Winds of Change! — additional comments at the end of this post] I haven’t seen 300 (the movie), though I own and have read Frank Miller’s graphic novel, as well as Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield. More importantly, I also own and have read all of Herodotus’s The […]
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