Yesterday I finished Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer.

Sawyer is probably the most prominent current Canadian SF author and he likes to use Canadian locations in his books to add colour. He also has a very laid back, casual style that is quite different from most other authors in the field.

Usually I like his approach, and I've liked most of his books a lot, but it doesn't work as well in his latest novel. The little touches of local colour seem more of a distraction from the main story. Also, the main story itself is less engaging than most of his novels. The main characters undergoes a rejuvenation procedure along with his wife, but it succeeds for him and fails for her. There is also a background story of first contact with an alien species going on at the same time, but the two plots don't integrate well and the novel seems to meander along before wrapping up where most novels would begin.

It's an interesting effort to address the effects of aging, and how a person would react to returning to their youth, but ultimately failed to move me.

I just finished The Born Queen by Greg Keyes, the last book in his latest fantasy series called The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone.

I wrote about the last two books in the series here, and was glad that this book wrapped up the series, instead of diluting their impact by adding more and more installments like the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series, or the George R.R. Martin Game of Thrones series.

Keyes did an excellent job of creating a very fresh dark fantasy series, with interesting and believable characters and I'll definitely check out whatever his next book is.

Before I left for Yosemite, I finished The Difference Engine by Doron Swade, a curator at the Science Museum in London and head of a team that built a version of the Difference Engine #2 in the 90's.

There are two parts of the book - the main section of the book details Babbage's quest to build the Difference Engine and design of the Analytical Engine. The second, smaller section, is about the quest to build a version of the Engine in time for Babbage's bicentennial. Both parts are quite interesting. I had read about Babbage and his engines before but learned a few new things from this book. For example, I didn't know that a Swedish printer named Georg Scheutz was inspired by Babbage's design and succeeded where Babbage failed and built a version of a difference engine of his own design within Babbage's lifetime. Sadly, it was a commercial failure and didn't lead to anything more than Babbage's work.

This afternoon, we went and saw Iron Man.

It's quite enjoyable, but also a by-the-numbers superhero movie with lots of wooden writing and characters. If a stiffer, or less charismatic actor than Robert Downey Jr. had been cast, I think it would have been a total flop rather than the success it is.

I just got back from four days camping at Yosemite. Since it was during the week, and spring, we were able to get a reservation at one of the campsites in Yosemite Valley. For both those reasons, it also wasn't particularly crowded. We did some easy hikes (since we are wimps), saw some great scenery and I even did a little bouldering at Camp 4, the climber's mecca. The weather was nice and the rivers and waterfalls were very full with winter runoff. There are a few photos here.

I spent most of the weekend getting my geek on at the 2008 Maker Faire. I wrote about last year's event here.

This year was also cool, but I wonder if this event is heading the way of San Francisco's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival - an event that has grown to such a size that it is less fun to attend. This year, it felt like there were a lot of attendees who were just there because they heard it was a the place to be, rather than because they are interested in the DIY culture the event celebrates. I got there early on Saturday and it took 20+ minutes to get from the freeway into the parking lot and I heard it got a lot worse later in the day.

I saw lots of interesting lectures, some very cool sculptures and some good bands, including Total Annihilation, Microfiche and Culann's Hounds.

Here are a few pictures I posted from this year's event.

I spent a large part of the weekend taking a class at The Crucible, a cool, local non-profit that focuses on the more industrial parts of arts. I was taking a general welding class that exposed us to all four main types of welding - arc/stick, MIG, TIG and oxyacetylene.

It was a very interesting class and once I decide what I want to do with it, I will probably take some follow on in-depth classes. One surprising thing to me was the quality of the teachers. Having taking a number of classes in different things, I've found that people who are good at doing something aren't always good at teaching it. In this case, each of the different types of welding was taught by a different teacher and they were all excellent.

Out of the four types, oxyacetylene was the most fun and MIG seemed the most practical. TIG would also be useful, but I'm not sure if the extra cost, and difficulty, would be worth it unless I was going to do something that required it like working with aluminum. Arc/stick welding seemed nicely affordable but was by far the most difficult and the most work.

Last night I finished Spindrift by Allen Steele.

This book is set in the same universe as the Coyote series (Coyote, Coyote Rising and Coyote Frontier) but is not a direct sequel. I wrote about the 2nd book in the series here. Somehow, I missed the 3rd book and will have to go back and pick it up.

I liked this book - it's really a pretty straightforward exploration/first-contact story set using the background from the series. The exploration and buildup to first contact is well done, though the over-zealous and incompetent captain who causes disaster is a caricature right out of central casting. One bonus good point - this novel is not, as far as I can tell, based on earlier short stories like Coyote and Coyote Rising.

I still wouldn't say that I liked it as much as his near space series though.

I just finished Perfectly Legal, by David Cay Johnston, with the large subtitle "The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and CheatEverybody Else".

This book is good at getting you riled up over the problems with the US tax code but it doesn’t really deliver on its main thesis – that the rich are rigging the system to move more of the tax burden onto the middle class and poor. From the book’s conclusion, the two main instruments the author accuses are over-funding of social security (which is tilted towards the lower end because the income affected tops out quite quickly) and the creeping increase in the alternative minimum tax. Neither of these is part of a scheme by the super-rich – both are clearly side-effects of previous policy decisions, not explicit intentions.

In the case of social security, it was not intended as a tax to be shared with general revenue, but instead a forced retirement savings plan where people would get back similar amounts to what they paid in, and the over-funding was seen as a way to delay the point where the fund became insolvent. Of course, in reality the cash flow from this was seen as a way to appear to reduce deficits but this is simple political opportunism, not scheming by the richest citizens.

Similarly, the increasing cash flows from the AMT are a result of an oversight when it was set up that didn’t index it to inflation. These are now seen as necessary to avoid larger deficits, so neither side wants to reduce the bracket creep.

In other parts of the book, the author gives details on legislative schemes pushed by the rich that will reduce taxes paid by the rich, but is this surprising? Once it became clear early in this century that property laws as they apply to taxes no longer applied and that there were no limits to what would be taxed or how much would be taken, it became a free for all and it’s not surprising that people with more resources (i.e. the rich) are better at defending their interests than those with less resources (i.e. the poor).

Fundamentally, this book suffers from a lack of philosophical understanding of its issues – is it right to take wealth from some, and give it to others? If so, what are the limits on this, if any? This lack of clarity leads the author to lump together corporations taking advantage of legal schemes of avoiding taxes and those that are deliberately breaking the law to hide income. The first is a natural result of an incredible complex tax code that is constantly being updated for political reasons to favour some activities and penalize others. Any complex system will produce unexpected results, and these will be exploited by those with the resources to find them. The second is simple crime, even though it is encouraged by the same Byzantine and arbitrary tax code mentioned above.

The author also spends some time on income disparities, and the supposed stagnation of income for the middle class. But if you read carefully, you notice a common mistake. The income figures he is using are based on household income, and they are close to flat for the middle class since the 70s, but that assumes that household size stays the same. The average number of people per household has actually been shrinking, which means that the income per capita, which is what really matters, has been growing for the middle class. The rich and super-rich may still be getting larger slices of the pie but income has not been stagnant for other groups.

I just finished Tim Powers latest novel, Three Days to Never.

Powers broke out of the science fiction ghetto with his last book, Declare, which combined straight forward thriller elements with his trademark secret societies and hidden mystical events tied into real people and events, in this case to do with the cold war against the Soviets.

In Three Days to Never, there are still secret societies that act like spies, and ties to real people and events, this time built around Einstein's life, but it doesn't have the grand arc that Declare had and feels more similar to the books that preceded it - the semi-series of Last Call, Expiration Date and Earthquake Weather.

I first read Tim Powers work back in 1988, starting with On Stranger Tides. I discovered him about the same time I discovered James Blaylock, who it turned out is a friend of Powers and you can see the similarities in their styles back then. Both authors are highly recommended, particularly their early works, even though Blaylock has produced many fewer books, and had less success, than Powers in the last few years.

I don't post many links here, but this is particularly interesting to anyone who was into computer games back when Infocom dominated the adventure game market, before graphics became king.

It goes into some detail of a sequel to Infocom's most famous game, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that never appeared even though the company struggled with it for years. More than just a discussion of the history, the article has actual emails and documents from the game development and an early build of the start of the game itself.

Unlike most, the comments are also very informative as a number of Infocom luminaries and other participants actually appear and comment on the article.

Last night, we saw Bobby McFerrin, Chick Corea and Jack DeJohnette as part of the SF Jazz spring season.

As you might expect from a show that combined an a cappella vocalist, a pianist and a drummer, it was a little different from most jazz shows. There was more audience participation than in any jazz show I've seen before - Bobby did some call and repeat things with the audience and even went out into the audience at one point to incorporate some audience members vocalizations into the show.

It was a very enjoyable show and all three artists mixed things up very well. Chick played some percussion instruments at times, Jack played a little keyboard and some kind of synth, Bobby sat down and played a little piano beside Chick at one point and all three of them shared some scatting on a few tunes.

Yesterday I finished Old Man's War by John Scalzi, his first novel.

Old Man's War is a deliberate throwback that draws obvious comparisons to books like Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Haldeman's Forever War. The main difference is that the soldiers in those books are externally enhanced (power armor, weapons) while the ones in Old Man's War are internally enhanced (modified clone bodies with enhancements).

It's a good back, well written with appealing characters, but thinking back to the other two novels I mentioned, I'm not sure what it adds to this genre. It's variations on the themes are slight and it's point of view seems not dissimilar. But based on this book, I will probably read others from Scalzi.

I just finished The Yiddish Policemen's Union, the latest novel by Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Michael Chabon.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is basically a hardboiled private eye mystery. The only difference is that the protagonist is actually a police office, but he quickly loses his badge so that puts him on the same footing as a PI.

The problem with the hardboiled genre is that it has been mined so heavily. The genre was pretty well covered by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and Mickey Spillane took it to it's hardboiled conclusion. Since then, everything has been repetition with variation. The biggest variation in this book is the setting. It's set in an alternate history where Israel was destroyed in 1948 and the US government created a sanctuary for Jews in Alaska, both things that almost happened.

As is inevitable, there is a death, an investigation and a conspiracy. Along the way, the protagonist persists and suffers his way to the solution. Coming from a Pulitzer Prize winning author, it is better written than most mysteries and the relationships are drawn a little better, but it is just a good example of the genre rather than something that transcends it.

Last night we saw the Wayne Shorter Quartet with special guests Imani Winds at the Masonic Auditorium in SF, part of the SF Jazz Spring Season.

Imani Winds is a wind quintet, playing modern chamber music. They did a set, then Wayne Shorter did a set and then they combined into a nonet for a set.

The Imani Wind set was interesting. It was a neat sound, and the pieces they played were original compositions and quite good.

Wayne Shorter's set was basically free jazz, which is not my favourite kind of jazz. There's nothing to hold on to - no consistent melody, rhythm or structure in which to judge the improvisation against. There were good moments in the music last night, but after a while it all starts to sound the same.

Last night I finished First Among Sequels, the latest Thursday Next novel by Jasper Fforde.

As I mentioned here, the last book, Something Rotten, felt like it was going to be the last book in the series since it wrapped up all the loose ends from the previous books, but it turns out it was just the end of that series of books. First Among Sequels is intended to be the first of a new series of four books. It also has an odd title, a play on First Among Equals, but it doesn't make a lot of sense since it is actually the fourth Thursday Next sequel.

Overall, it's an enjoyable book. Most of it takes place in the real world, fourteen years after the end of Something Rotten, which keeps the amount of meta-fictional gimmickry to a minimum, even though there is a bit of that since the novel features three different Thursday Next's - the real one and two fictional one from novelizations of her adventures.

Even though it's intended as the first book of a new series, this book is not recommended unless you've read the previous four books.

Yesterday I finished Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King, about the construction of the dome on top of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.

A few interesting things jumped out at me. First, how patient people used to be. It took over 50 years to build Santa Maria del Fiore, and at the start, no one knew how to construct the proposed dome. Second, how small Florence was. People today seem to think that nothing important can happen in small towns or cities, but during the Renaissance, Florence's population varied widely (due to recurrence's of the Black Death) but was less than a hundred thousand.

Florence was one of my favourite places in Italy, the other being Vernazza, and one I would like to go back to since we only spent one night there. On reading this book, it was nice to have seen some of the things it describes, like Brunelleschi's dome and the bronze doors of the Baptistery, made by Brunelleschi's chief rival, Lorenzo Ghiberti.

On Thursday, I finished Fortunes of War by Stephen Coonts.

Not much to say on this one. It's pretty run of the mill military fiction. The archtype for this kind of book, and still probably the best example, is Red Storm Rising from Tom Clancy. The problem more recent authors have is to find an antagonist now that the cold war is over. In this case, the bad guys are Japanese, going to war with Russia and the inevitable good guys are the Americans who help out the Russians.

I just finished Fleet of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner, a prequel to Niven's Ringworld.

Fleet of World is an OK book but nowhere near as good as Niven's earlier Known Space books, including Ringworld. The new book adds to the backstory of the Puppeteer's homeworlds, which are seen in Ringworld fleeing an explosion at the galactic core. It also adds adds to the Puppeteer's interactions with humans by adding a group of humans that accidentally discovered the Puppeteer's home and were enslaved for generations.

Books like this are tricky as the author is either over-constrained by the previous novels or changes things in such a way that it can diminish the original novel. Fleet of Worlds fits in the second camp. Some of the things that happen in this book make the events of Ringworld seem less meaningful.

Last night, we saw the Barefoot Nellies and Mighty Crows at the Starry Plough in Berkeley.

I've been friends with members of both bands since before they were in bands, so it is nice to see them developing as bands. The greatest strength of both bands is their singing - they each have a number of strong singers in their band and do a lot of great harmony pieces. And they've both developed good band rhythms over the years. I think the Crows are a little more polished while the Nellies are a little more adventurous in their set, even including a few nice original numbers.

If you like local bluegrass, you owe it to yourself to check out these two bands. And the Nellies even have a live CD for sale now. You can't get it online anywhere yet, so you'll have to show up at a show to get a copy.

This was the first time we've been to the Starry Plough and we'll probaby go back - it seemed like a very nice little venue for seeing local music, and it's only 10 minutes from my house, which is a big plus.