As recommended by many, including Corpsey La Rue, I started reading George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. The first book is called A Game of Thrones, which you may have inferred from the title of this post.

I really enjoyed this book. A solid 4.5/5.

The book is in the 700 page range, depending on the format you pick. It takes a bit of time to get through, but I found the style of writing to be natural and easy to follow. I can’t quite say the same thing for the massive host of characters, though. Martin has invented an entire universe and has no problem at all showing you how well thought out it is. He’s got names for every person, place or thing in the book - and how they relate to just about everything else - so after the first few chapters, you start to mix up the relationships between them all. At first I tried to go back and sort out the relations between them all, but advice from Mr. Moulder was that I didn’t have to. So, I just let the story play out, and luckily for us readers who are going through the story for the first time, Martin uses a lot of context to help us remember who people are. My point is that you don’t have to keep track of who everyone is, it gets so that you know them all over time - Martin doesn’t expect you to remember them all off the bat.

There is quite a bit I enjoyed about the book. I’ll try to list some of the bigger ones here. First, I liked the setting. The book is set in an older age. Life seems quite a bit more brutal in those times, and believe me when I say the book does not shy away from any of the grueling realities. While some people would argue that things were “simpler” back then, I think things were quite a bit more difficult. Decisions carried more weight (in terms of survival), and people had more skills directly related to their fundamental survival in the world. I enjoyed reading about people living with nature, living off the land, and being able to take care of themselves; it really appeals to the parts of me that enjoy getting out into nature for a few days. Plus, they name their swords. I mean, that’s just cool.

You can probably guess from the title, that the plot of the book involves a number of different parties going after a throne … and you’d be right! It’s very well done, there is some excellent scheming and plotting going on. The story jumps from around from character to character, and is told from the perspective of whoever is talking at the time. Martin does a great job of exposing the truth of what’s going on with a situation, while also exposing the interpretations, assumptions and reactions of the main people in the book. Frequently you’ll see something happen from 2 or 3 points of view, which I found to be a really unique way of telling a story. That’s not to say that things are repeated, you just get to see how events are interpreted from the point of view of a few different people. That was quite realistic to me, as it’s how things tend to go in real life, right? You have your perspective and opinions of what’s going on, and you also hear what other people think of what’s going on, then you have to piece it all together to try and figure out what’s really going on.

While the book is classified as a fantasy novel, it’s not as “fantasy-ish” as Tolkien’s books, or C.S. Lewis’ either. I get the impression that there is some magic, but it’s really not flaunted around as they are in other books. Much like in our world, for the most part, the masses are unaware of the mystical energies around them. There are some excellent parallels to older and newer religions, and their battle/union with science. There are also some really cool beasts in the book, which I look forward to reading more about later on. Direwolves? Yeah, those things are COOL. I gotta get me one of those!

One of the upsides to having so many characters, is that lots of of them can be killed off in unexpected ways. There were quite a few of situations where I was suprised to see someone die. I think that’s great of Martin to build up your relationship and knowledge of a character, only to have them killed off. Seems so much more realistic to me, as if you’re reading about things going on right now, rather than reading about something that happened a long time ago, and has been written with focus on those who made it through the events.

So, those are just some of my thoughts on the book. The story is really worth picking up - it’s not just a tale about some complicated plots to overtake a throne; it contains some excellent side-plots and character development through the novel. Definitely worth the cash to add this one to your collection.

As most of you know, Jeff and Sheila were married on the April 14th. They hosted a wonderful wedding, and I think you’ll agree that they looked quite happy together:

It was the first wedding I’ve been to that was DJ’d with an ipod, but if anyone could pull it off, Brent could - and he did, flawlessly. There was excellent food, a wonderful serenade of Pachelbel’s Canon with the bride playing the flute, great speeches, and a 15 million candle flashlight. Yeah, well what wedding is complete without one, really. All I can say about that, is that Jeff’s parents really know him.

If it’s true that you can judge a person by the quality of the people around them, then Jeff and Sheila are pretty amazing people. It was a fantastic wedding. There were even special guest appearances by Jeff’s dad’s old roommate … who is now Jeff team lead at work.  The hulk and his son also showed up, dressed in suits:

And, of course, everyone was dressed up, but I’d have to give the best outfit award (other than Jeff’s, obviously) to Josh:

All in all, it was a great night, and I had a great time. So, thanks to Jeff, Sheila and their families for all the hard work they put into the event. Congratulations again to you Jeff and Sheila, I wish you all the best!

So, it seems that if you’re running FC5 or a newer x.org X windows server, and you want to use flash, you’ll run into some problems with the text displaying properly.  Since we use flash in our products at work, I ran into the problem today.  Sir Soon to be Married found out the solution to the problem, which is as follows:

You can work around the problem  by creating

I finished Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress on Sunday - I had started it late thursday night.

I suppose you may infer from that that I enjoyed the book. And I did, it was a really fun read. As it happens, I work in the security world, and happen to know a decent amount about computers and cryptography. While I could pick apart some of the details in the book, it was actually pretty technically accurate. You know, except for the huge assumption that was made at the beginning of the book - that the NSA have a super crazy machine that can break any code out there.

While the formula for this book followed Angels & Demons, and The DaVinci Code - I don’t hold that against him. I had a good idea of where the book was going throughout, but that didn’t mean I was by any means sure. I had enough doubt to second guess myself most of the time. His writing style is quite fun, so even if I knew the answers, I’m sure I would have enjoyed it anyway. I didn’t enjoy it as much as the other two I mentioned, but it’s still a really good read.

I am not abusing this software, this software is abusing ME.

iTunes

Gtalk Client

Firefox

How long has it been since you’ve written a book report?! I just made it through a book that I enjoyed, so I thought I’d write a little something up about it.

This novel has 1022 pages containing all the stories of Sherlock Holmes, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. For the most part, it’s set in London, England.

The style of writing and the stories take a bit of effort to get into, and I’d be lying if I said the stories were gripping. It took me a number of months to work my way though the book, but it was well worth the effort.

It’s great reading mysteries because they excercise your brain. In just about every story, I would look at the evidence given and the characters involved and come to my own conclusions, and they were usually wrong. It’s not because they hadn’t told me some vital clue that I wouldn’t know until the end, either. I just didn’t put the facts together in as logical a way as I could have. Granted, it takes some creative logic as the facts are given with certain biases to lead you away from the real answer. That’s not to say that once you read a few, you start to find all the stories similar - they’re actually all quite unique. So, reading a book that is so much based on details and logic is a very different read than most books. Of course, these are mostly just short stories, too. It’s not like there are 400 pages dedicated to one case.

It’s similar to a super-hero novel. Holmes had extra-ordinary strength, was a superb intellectual, was very focused, aided those in need of help regardless of their ability to pay for it, and even seemed to be able to alter his very appearance at will. He didn’t have bow hunting skills, but we’ll forgive him of that.

I love reading books set in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. That time was quite different to how we live today and it’s neat to look back and see what was normal, and how people behaved. Granted, this is how this particular book represented it - I’m not sure the absolutely everyone smoked opium as much as Doyle was reputed to.

As an example - swearing just isn’t done. In a couple of the stories, someone might say “hell” or “goddamn” and they would immediately be reprimanded for their language, and usually appologize for it, even if they were a criminal in a towering rage and absoltely hated the person they were talking to.

The way of life as a whole was fantastic. Electricity was just a novelty. Everyone got places by horse. Telegrams were the fastest things going, though there was an occasional phone call. When someone stopped by, they sent in their cards to who they were visiting … even if they were visiting close personal friends. When someone came to visit, they were immediately offered something to smoke. A 100 horse power car was an extravagant beast of a machine. To cross continents, you got on a boat and kicked back for a few weeks.

The differences in everyday life from then and today is what held my attention throughout the stories. That, and as the book got on, you actually started to get to know the people in it pretty well, so it was neat to keep reading about them.

It was an interesting read, and I highly recommend it.

This was really funny back in the day…

Today I saw this circulating around…

The first one is much better. You can’t out-do the classics!

This past weekend, the members of the Provincial Conservative Party made a bold move, and voted that Ralph Klein sucks. Members who voted at the convention only gave Ralph a 55% approval rating, even though, the masses are giving him 72-75% approval. This leaves me scratching my head, for a few reasons:

1. Follow my logic…(or illogic)
Who voted for Ralph in the last election? Party members.
Who voted Ralph in as the leader of the party 13 years ago? Party memebers.
Who is giving him a ~72% approval rating, publicly? Probably a lot party members, but non-members such as myself included.
Who sent the “Ralph Sucks” message this weekend? Party members?

What? I know I might not understand the whole issue. But I watch/read the news, and the “experts” are saying that this is all since Ralph announced his retirement, so now he is seen as a “lame duck”. I am not sure what that means. Do the party members think he is just going to coast to retirement? Has he indicated that this is his plan? He knows it might be time for some fresh ideas and leadership, but give the man some respect and afford him some dignity. (even if he didn’t always maintain that himself)

The first pie was from a punk kid, but it seems the second pie is from his “friends” in the party….shame on you all.

2. The people who voted against Ralph are the MLAs. If they represent the opinions of the people, shouldn’t the vote for Ralph have reflected the popular opinion?

No, and here is why. Whinners. Yes, you Lyle Olberg. Huge whinner. Grow up, dude. There will be plenty of time for your own politicing and jockeying for party leadership. But stop wasting our time. Ralph IS NOW the Premiere of Alberta. So, get back to work. Stop the plotting and schemeing and go back to doing the job we all expect you to do. All of these MLAs rubbing their hands and slobbering over the chance to become Premiere are looking stupid. I hope none of you are the next party leader. Especially Lyle Olberg.

Well, I am writting publically to say, I approve of Ralph and job he has done for the last 13 years. I am sad to see it end. Ralph has done a lot, even for me personally. He gave us all $400 bucks to make your Christmas credit card bills a little easier to swallow. He lowered car insurance (and mine went down very significantly). He got our province out of debt and made us into one of the most profitable regions in North America. Everyone wants to be us. We have jobs, we have money, we have prosperity. Sure, health care and education took some hits. Some things were sacrificed. But Ralph always told it like it was, and he always did what he said he would do. He was an honest politician, even if you didn’t like his honesty, you have to admit that.

Well, thanks Ralph, I still approve!