Isaac Asimov Presents the Great Science Fiction 2 by Isaac AsimovMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
View all my reviews
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Review: Isaac Asimov Presents the Great Science Fiction 2
Isaac Asimov Presents the Great Science Fiction 2 by Isaac AsimovMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
View all my reviews
Review: Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 1: 1939
Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 1: 1939 by Isaac AsimovMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I didn’t actually read this book; I read it as part of a combined volume:Isaac Asimov Presents the Golden Years of Science Fiction: 36 Stories and Novellas. But there wasn’t enough space in my review there for all my comments on the individual stories, so I’m posting them here. Refer to my review of that book for my thoughts on the book as a whole.
Below is a short description and review/discussion of every included story, as well as some random thoughts I had while reading. This is as much for my reference as it is for the benefit of prospective readers of this book (I wish there was a Goodreads for short stories!). Spoilers are included, but are marked off with Spoiler tags. I did not include star ratings for the stories. I can, if anyone would find that helpful.
“I, Robot,” by Eando Binder: Holy crap, that’s a wonderful story. No wonder Asimov was inspired by it to write “Robbie.” I can’t believe I’ve never read it before. I’m not saying it’s among the best ever, but it’s quite good: thoughtful, insightful, surprising, and with a minimum of scientific error. No, computers will not develop drives and emotions without being programmed to do so, but the story specifically claims otherwise, so fine. It’s told from the point of view of Adam Link, an intelligent, feeling robot who is considered a monster by the public.
“The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton,” by Robert Bloch, is about a man trapped in a spaceship traveling to Mars with a broken instrument panel and no way to communicate. It’s cute, maybe, but completely implausible, and I found it ridiculous. Asimov says that it was better than “Marooned Off Vesta.” I deeply disagree. Apparently people in the 1930’s didn’t believe in testing machines before trusting their lives to them. At least that’s what you’d glean from much science fiction from the era.
“Trouble with Water,” by H. L. Gold: I’m not sure how this story made it into this collection. It’s pure fantasy, not science fiction, and not very good at that, especially in the actual writing. (view spoiler) Even within the conceit of the story, I thought that the way it was handled was silly.
“Cloak of Aesir” by Don A. Stewart (a.k.a. John Campbell) is surprisingly good. Surprisingly because it starts out very oddly and obtusely, with a strange and obscure writing style. And yet, if you stick with it, it begins to clarify; the obscure is made clear, the obtuse is explained, and the seemingly irrelevant becomes worthwhile. I don’t know if I would say that Campbell is a truly brilliant writer, but perhaps he could have been. “Cloak of Aesir” is at root a novella of resistance to occupation and oppression involving a Cloak with wondrous powers, but there is much more to the story than that. Asimov is right to say of Campbell, “There was no way in which we could have given up the Editor and yet now and then we mourn the Writer and what we might have had.”
“The Day is Done,” by Lester del Rey: What a wonderful story, about an aging Neanderthal (view spoiler). As Greenberg’s preface says, is very hard to do good prehistoric science fiction, and del Rey does it masterfully. A wonderful illustration of the fact that science fiction doesn’t have to be space ships or laser guns; Anthropology is a science too.
“The Ultimate Catalyst,” by John Taine: This is a silly story about a biologist and his daughter who are “guests” of a trapped/exiled dictator. It’s sad that it’s silly, because the actual writing—the scripting—is pretty good. I was liking the story until I figured out what was going on. It’s like he plugged a bunch of unnecessary science into the plot, when much simpler methods would have done. I would really have much preferred a sociological story exploring why and how the world came to reject dictatorship.
Sprague de Camp, unsurprisingly, lives up to his reputation. “The Gnarly Man,” about a Neanderthal who lived to modern times, is an excellent story. Not superb, but interesting and well worth reading.
“Black Destroyer,” by A. E. van Vogt: Wow what a good story, about an alien predator on a dying world. Excellent. The idea of a predator that cunning, that able…chilling. The ending isn’t top-notch, but the rest of the story is. And this was his first published story! I should read some more van Vogt.
“Trends” is quite an insightful story from a 19-year-old Asimov. The writing quality isn’t quite up to his later work, of course, but the ideas are. A story of a spaceship launch attempt in a world consumed by religionism and anti-science fervor (which apparently was a new thing in science fiction, though Asimov eschews credit for the novelty because he got the idea from elsewhere), the phrase in the story that the title is drawn from is poignant: “Trends are things of centuries and millenniums, not years or decades. For five hundred years we have been moving toward science. You can’t reverse that in thirty years.”
“The Blue Giraffe”: Fascinating. Surprisingly good, for a story with what seems to be a silly premise, namely the discovery of blue giraffes and other impossible creatures in an African preserve. Or perhaps not so surprisingly, given that the author is L. Sprague de Camp. This story is not only scientifically plausible and gripping, but has an excellent and unexpected ending. (Mind you, I foresaw the problem, but the way it was resolved surprised me.)
Favorite quote: “He made a resolve never to speak harshly to anybody he couldn’t see.”
“The Misguided Halo,” by Henry Kuttner: A silly and pointless fantasy about a man who is mistakenly made a saint. I don’t mind fantasy, but I don’t like pointless fantasy, and anyway this is supposed to be a science fiction collection.
“Heavy Planet,” by Milton A. Rothman: I don’t understand. Is this an excerpt? It’s not bad, but it feels like a chapter of a larger work. It’s a pretty good hard SF story about life on a very large planet with intense gravity, but it ends too abruptly and leaves far too many questions unanswered.
“Life-Line,” by Robert A. Heinlein: I’ve read this story several times before, although in a slightly different edit. It is, of course, pretty good. Not as good as some of Heinlein’s later stuff, but a fine first story, about a man who can predict when you’ll die through scientific means. All I’ve got to say is, in answer to the implied question at the end of the story: Hell yes I’d want to know when I’m going to die. I’m not sure that was always my answer, but it certainly is now. I’ve got plans to make.
I have another comment, though, regarding this quote from Greenberg’s preface to the story: “Although [Heinlein’s] political and social views have generated much controversy in the last twenty years, his emphasis on order, individualism, and discipline aroused little comment early in his career, with America in a struggle against an illegal, disorderly, and undisciplined fascism.” I’m sorry, what? Am I missing something? How was fascism/Nazism any of those things?
“Ether Breather” is an interesting story by Theodore Sturgeon (view spoiler). It’s a bit dissatisfying—nothing’s really explained—but a fascinating concept.
“Pilgrimage,” by Nelson Bond: Wonderful! An engrossing story about a matriarchal culture and a girl who wants to be a priestess, but has some surprising things to learn. Very enjoyable and well done. The only problem is the implausible breeding arrangements, but that’s a pet peeve of mine.
“Rust,” by Joseph E. Kelleam is a somewhat oversimplistic story. It’s a pathetic (in the literal sense) tale about killer robots who have destroyed humanity and are now dying out themselves.
“The Four-Sided Triangle,” by William F. Temple has promise, but that promise is not fulfilled. Three people—two men and a woman—invent a perfect duplicator. Great! But the author does not then go on to show us the possible consequences of such a device, as it is put to relatively mundane purposes. Then (view spoiler) Heartbreak and tragedy ensue. But the story only skims over the interesting issues, and instead focuses on contrived dilemmas that really shouldn’t be dilemmas. It’s sad. Apparently there was a book and film based on the story, but although the premise is interesting enough, unless the ideas are greatly expanded, I don’t think I’d like to see them.
However, “The Four-Sided Triangle” does semi-accurately portray the trials and frustrations involved in the scientific process, which is a surprisingly rare thing in science fiction.
“Star Bright” starts with a fascinating premise—what if wishing on a star actually worked, at least once?—and turned it into something rather silly and disappointing, especially from Jack Williamson. There’s no real moral here, no upshot, no point. It’s not even really science fiction, because although the mechanism for his abilities is (somewhat) explained, how he got them is not.
“Misfit,” about a young man who joins the “Cosmic Construction Corps” and is discovered to have extraordinary abilities, is great. Of course it is; it’s Heinlein. That doesn’t mean that Heinlein stories are axiomatically good, but he seems to grasp the concept of story, of narrative, far better than most of his compatriots. His stories have dramatic tension, they make sense, they are entertaining, and they have moral lessons buried in them. These moral lessons aren’t blatant, or preachy (the few stories where he attempts this fall flat); they’re just implied statements of value, which, whether you agree or disagree with them, enhance the enjoyability of the story as you subconsciously evaluate those moral lessons. Perhaps most importantly, the science-fictional elements of the story, while certainly present, are not the point. The point is the people, and the story. “Life-Line” was largely about the “gimmick,” the science-fictional element, and therefore was not as good as most of his later stories. Don’t get me wrong—I love stories that explore the consequences of a given development or idea. But even when Heinlein does that, he focuses on the people and the story, and drags us along in fascination.
View all my reviews
Review: Isaac Asimov Presents the Golden Years of Science Fiction: 36 Stories and Novellas
Isaac Asimov Presents the Golden Years of Science Fiction: 36 Stories and Novellas by Isaac AsimovMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book is just what it says: an anthology of the outstanding science fiction short stories from 1939 and 1940, chosen by Martin Greenberg and Isaac Asimov. Actually that’s not quite right; it includes some fantasy stories as well, which I think is a mistake; not only is it in contradiction with the title, the fantasy stories conflict with the tone of the book.
Regardless, there are some great stories in here. Not all are excellent, but they are still worth reading if you’re interested in the history of science fiction (in English, anyway).
I read this as a kind of sequel to Before the Golden Age, and I miss the autobiographical aspect Asimov brought to that book, with little personal vignettes before and after each story. But that stuff is covered in The Early Asimov for this period anyway, so I shouldn’t complain. Both Greenberg and Asimov preface every story (except those by Asimov, which are prefaced by Asimov alone) with interesting tidbits, and each volume (of the two included in this book) is preceded by a little historical background regarding what was going on both in and outside of the world of science fiction at the time. It’s nice to get a little of the feel of what it might have been like to read these when they were published, but I would have liked more of the same. In particular, since John Campbell was such an instrumental figure in the Golden Age—indeed the instrumental figure by all accounts—I would have liked more discussion of his practices and how these stories differed from those published previously.
So if you’re interested in getting a feel for the kinds of stories that were being published in the early days of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, this is an essential read. If you only want to read the true “classics” of the era, perhaps another anthology would serve you better—there are timeless classics here, but they are interspersed among more forgettable stories. And if you’re looking for information on why the Golden Age was the Golden Age, I’d advise you look elsewhere (and if you find such a book, let me know); information on that topic is sparse in this work.
A couple of administrative notes:
First, this volume is a combination of two previous works: Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 1, 1939 and Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 2, 1940. It is the first volume in its own series, Isaac Asimov Presents the Golden Years of Science Fiction. The second book in the series is Isaac Asimov Presents the Golden Years of Science Fiction, Second Series, covering 1941 and 1942. I mention this because I was confused, and thought others might be as well. This book contains Volume 1 and Volume 2, and further books are labeled with “Series.” I wasn’t sure if the next book was Series Three, or what, especially when I couldn’t seem to find Series Two. But no, the next book is Series Two, and this is Series One, even though not labeled as such.
Second, the Forward to the combined volume is signed “JHR.” Does anyone have an idea of who that might be?
I was going to include a short description and review/discussion of every included story, as well as some random thoughts I had while reading, as much for my reference as it is for the benefit of prospective readers of this book (I wish there was a Goodreads for short stories!). But I ran out of space, so I posted them under the individual volumes: Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 1, 1939 and Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 2, 1940.
View all my reviews
Monday, October 21, 2013
Bathtub analogy
A good way to understand inflation is through the bathtub analogy. Think of a bathtub as the economy. The size of the bathtub is the size of the economy. The water is money. The current water level is the price level. This analogy is fairly precise, as long as you imagine that the bathtub can grow or shrink. If the bathtub gets bigger, i.e. the economy enlarges, the water level (prices) obviously will decrease. If you add more water (money), the water level will increase. If you add more water at the same rate as the bathtub gets bigger, the water level won’t change. And it doesn’t matter where you add the water; the overall water level will rise. However, it won’t necessarily rise all at once. If you turn on the shower and distribute the new water more-or-less evenly, the water level will rise all at once. But if you turn on the tap and put all the new water into one end of the tub, that end of the tub will rise first, and the other end of the tub will rise last. In that time, where one end of the tub has more water than the other, those at that end have an advantage: They have the new money, and can buy goods at the old prices. Near the end of the process, when everywhere but the far end of the tub has evened out, those at the far end are facing the new prices, but don’t have the new money yet, so they are at a disadvantage.
It’s important to note that inflation will occur regardless of where or how money (water) is added. Regardless of whether the Fed prints money and hands it to the banks, or whether Congress prints money and spends it, or whether everyone owns their own printing press and prints money for themselves, the water level will rise based on how much water is added to the tub, not how it got there.
Under our current system, the Fed is the faucet, and the wealthy, in particular the banks, are at the front of the tub. They receive the new money first, before the economy is able to adjust, and can buy things at artificially low prices. The poor and those living on fixed incomes or solely on interest (such as retirees) are at the back of the tub. They get the new money last, so they are facing artificially high prices.
It’s important to note that inflation will occur regardless of where or how money (water) is added. Regardless of whether the Fed prints money and hands it to the banks, or whether Congress prints money and spends it, or whether everyone owns their own printing press and prints money for themselves, the water level will rise based on how much water is added to the tub, not how it got there.
Under our current system, the Fed is the faucet, and the wealthy, in particular the banks, are at the front of the tub. They receive the new money first, before the economy is able to adjust, and can buy things at artificially low prices. The poor and those living on fixed incomes or solely on interest (such as retirees) are at the back of the tub. They get the new money last, so they are facing artificially high prices.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
OpenPGP key transition statement
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512
- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160
Date: October 16, 2013
For a number of reasons[0], I’ve recently set up a new OpenPGP key, and will be transitioning away from my old one.
The old key will continue to be valid for some time, but I prefer all future correspondence to come to the new one. I would also like this new key to be re-integrated into the web of trust. This message is signed by both keys to certify the transition.
The old key was:
pub 1024D/BB9EC476E934D755 1998-09-22
Key fingerprint = CD29 354E 5C51 E528 0E0E 19DF BB9E C476 E934 D755
And the new key is:
pub 4096R/BEB8C013FCC700F3 2013-10-16
Key fingerprint = 0AA7 230B 8C3C 2C2E 12E9 525D BEB8 C013 FCC7 00F3
To fetch the full key from a public key server, you can simply do:
gpg --keyserver hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-key BEB8C013FCC700F3
or if you’re using GPGTools for Mac[1], choose “Retrieve from Keyserver…” from the Key menu in GPG Keychain Access and paste BEB8C013FCC700F3 into the “Key ID” field.
If you already know my old key, you can now verify that the new key is signed by the old one:
gpg --check-sigs BEB8C013FCC700F3
or with GPGTools, choose “Show Info” from the Key menu in GPG Keychain Access when the key is selected, choose the “User IDs” tab, and review the Signatures field.
If you don't already know my old key, or you just want to be double extra paranoid, you can check the fingerprint against the one above:
gpg --fingerprint BEB8C013FCC700F3
or view the fingerprint in the Key tab of the Key Inspector in GPG Keychain Access.
If you are satisfied that you've got the right key, and the UIDs match what you expect, I'd appreciate it if you would sign my key. You can do that by issuing the following command:
**
NOTE: if you have previously signed my key but did a local-only signature (lsign), you will not want to issue the following, instead you will want to use --lsign-key, and not send the signatures to the keyserver
**
gpg --sign-key BEB8C013FCC700F3
or choose “Sign…” from the Key menu in GPG Keychain Access while my new key is selected.
I'd like to receive your signatures on my key. Once you’ve signed it, please upload the signed key to a public key server:
gpg --keyserver hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net --send-key <my email address> [sorry, I don’t post my email online to avoid spam]
or choose “send public key to Keyserver” in the Key menu of GPG Keychain Access when my key is selected after you’ve signed it.
Additionally, I highly recommend that you implement a mechanism to keep your key material up-to-date so that you obtain the latest revocations and other updates in a timely manner. You can do regular key updates by using parcimonie[2] to refresh your keyring. Parcimonie is a daemon that slowly refreshes your keyring from a keyserver over Tor. It uses a randomized sleep, and fresh tor circuits for each key. The purpose is to make it hard for an attacker to correlate the key updates with your keyring.
I also highly recommend checking out the excellent Riseup GPG best practices doc, from which I stole most of the text for this transition message ;-)
https://we.riseup.net/riseuplabs+paow/openpgp-best-practices
Please let me know if you have any questions, or problems, and sorry for any inconvenience.
Jim Syler
0. https://www.debian-administration.org/users/dkg/weblog/48
1. https://gpgtools.org/
2. https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/code/parcimonie/
- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org
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=7aSL
- -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org
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=FOPC
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Hash: SHA512
- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160
Date: October 16, 2013
For a number of reasons[0], I’ve recently set up a new OpenPGP key, and will be transitioning away from my old one.
The old key will continue to be valid for some time, but I prefer all future correspondence to come to the new one. I would also like this new key to be re-integrated into the web of trust. This message is signed by both keys to certify the transition.
The old key was:
pub 1024D/BB9EC476E934D755 1998-09-22
Key fingerprint = CD29 354E 5C51 E528 0E0E 19DF BB9E C476 E934 D755
And the new key is:
pub 4096R/BEB8C013FCC700F3 2013-10-16
Key fingerprint = 0AA7 230B 8C3C 2C2E 12E9 525D BEB8 C013 FCC7 00F3
To fetch the full key from a public key server, you can simply do:
gpg --keyserver hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-key BEB8C013FCC700F3
or if you’re using GPGTools for Mac[1], choose “Retrieve from Keyserver…” from the Key menu in GPG Keychain Access and paste BEB8C013FCC700F3 into the “Key ID” field.
If you already know my old key, you can now verify that the new key is signed by the old one:
gpg --check-sigs BEB8C013FCC700F3
or with GPGTools, choose “Show Info” from the Key menu in GPG Keychain Access when the key is selected, choose the “User IDs” tab, and review the Signatures field.
If you don't already know my old key, or you just want to be double extra paranoid, you can check the fingerprint against the one above:
gpg --fingerprint BEB8C013FCC700F3
or view the fingerprint in the Key tab of the Key Inspector in GPG Keychain Access.
If you are satisfied that you've got the right key, and the UIDs match what you expect, I'd appreciate it if you would sign my key. You can do that by issuing the following command:
**
NOTE: if you have previously signed my key but did a local-only signature (lsign), you will not want to issue the following, instead you will want to use --lsign-key, and not send the signatures to the keyserver
**
gpg --sign-key BEB8C013FCC700F3
or choose “Sign…” from the Key menu in GPG Keychain Access while my new key is selected.
I'd like to receive your signatures on my key. Once you’ve signed it, please upload the signed key to a public key server:
gpg --keyserver hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net --send-key <my email address> [sorry, I don’t post my email online to avoid spam]
or choose “send public key to Keyserver” in the Key menu of GPG Keychain Access when my key is selected after you’ve signed it.
Additionally, I highly recommend that you implement a mechanism to keep your key material up-to-date so that you obtain the latest revocations and other updates in a timely manner. You can do regular key updates by using parcimonie[2] to refresh your keyring. Parcimonie is a daemon that slowly refreshes your keyring from a keyserver over Tor. It uses a randomized sleep, and fresh tor circuits for each key. The purpose is to make it hard for an attacker to correlate the key updates with your keyring.
I also highly recommend checking out the excellent Riseup GPG best practices doc, from which I stole most of the text for this transition message ;-)
https://we.riseup.net/riseuplabs+paow/openpgp-best-practices
Please let me know if you have any questions, or problems, and sorry for any inconvenience.
Jim Syler
0. https://www.debian-administration.org/users/dkg/weblog/48
1. https://gpgtools.org/
2. https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/code/parcimonie/
- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org
iEYEAREDAAYFAlJfF5AACgkQu57Eduk011W5GwCbBKey8PSFuuNf0IkfZ+J+cPFH
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=7aSL
- -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org
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P3hneNMr9Gc1jilo5GdM3znA86SVJchW3OB+4bOa8+0DAUQ+s35cn4CcwVX5Wqqv
LcviLrzzgDVfg3Ixrr9+Z3ZiPwBZo+CpQVfgwgLR/Hx+7aF6ITiZXnYi/85LibIH
TxpG0XQXJ+gVfDm6G0TeuNrNBwv6x9m7x2ed1HOLNej0nLDjVdo765/fLjnzB5sm
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vEQNld5Td1InA6Lne+7A
=FOPC
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Updates
- I’ve revamped how Labels work on Journal Entries; they were getting out of hand. Now there are just a few Categories; every post will have one (and, hopefully, only one) of these. Beneath the Categories in the sidebar of Journal Entries (not Current Thoughts, where this is posted; Categories have yet to get out of hand here) are various Labels; a post may have none, one, or more than one of these. Note that as I’m using Blogger’s Labels for both my Categories and Labels, they will be mixed up together at the bottom of individual posts, in alphabetical order. But the Categories links are useful for making sure you see all the posts in Journal Entries, anyway, without having to navigate through the somewhat cumbersome Archives links, as all posts with a given Category, regardless of date, will show up when you click on that Category’s link either in the sidebar or at the bottom of a post, and all posts have a Category.
- Book Notes with multiple entries for one book also are Labeled with the book title to make it easier to see all the posts on that book at once; these book-title Labels do not appear in the sidebar, so they are only found on the relevant posts. I will also include an author label when I post about multiple books from one author.
- I’ve also changed the links for all the little book graphics (and most other book links) to Google Books rather than Amazon.com. Google Books has lots of neat features, including internal previews of many books, and a link to reserve a copy at your local library. If you’re having trouble understanding a Book Note and want to see if you can find the context, Google Books might help. If not, there’s an Amazon link on every page; they often have previews too.
- On another note, because of the way I’ve structured this blog, it’s quite likely that entries in the compendium are outdated and have been updated and improved in their Department blog. Click on the link at the bottom of each post in the compendium to see the latest and greatest version of that post.
- Although I’m not entirely sure why I’m going to all this work; I seem to currently have a grand total of one verified email subscription (the widget in the sidebar in the compendium says two, but one of them is me) to this blog. Is no one reading this? Or are they just not using the email subscription feature? I do hope somebody’s reading this, or else I’m doing a whole lot of work for nothing; I looked yesterday and noticed that, even with all of the journal entries I’ve posted, I’ve only gotten through something like a fifth of my first journal so far, so there’s lots more coming…
- That reminds me: since entries in Journal Entries are posted by their original creation date (years ago in most cases), it is likely that newly posted entries will not appear at the top of the blog. This means that if you’re watching Journal Entries to see if there are new posts, you’re going to miss them. Either subscribe to Journal Entries via email or subscribe to or watch the compendium, or you’re going to miss the new journal entries. Yeah, it sucks, but I can’t think of a better way; I’ll be posting stuff from several journals written at different times, and I think it’s worthwhile to keep the entries in chronological order.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Third Thing
3. I remember! The third thing is that along with how the blog is now separated into two departments instead of five, I changed the method that the blog entries are reposted onto the compendium. Instead of having an email client always running that re-sends the posts to Blogger (as described in Me? Blogging?), I’ve had to change things around a bit. With the transition to New Blogger that allowed me to consolidate the blogs, something broke with how Blogger parses special characters. My department blogs have an em dash in their names—that thing. The problem is, you can’t find an em dash on a keyboard; it’s a special, high-ASCII character like • or æ or . Unlike the lower-128 characters (everything you actually see on a keyboard: letters, numbers, normal special characters like $%&@), there’s no standard ASCII code for the upper-128 characters, which, on the Mac, includes the em dash (option-shift-hyphen), but on other systems may not. So HTML threw its hands up and instituted what’s called HTML Entities instead, where special characters are represented by codes like — and • (which result in — and •, respectively). The problem in this case was that Blogger started escaping these codes, so the department links at the bottom of the posts on the main page started looking funky. Instead of sending "Genius/Idiot&mash;Current Thoughts" (embedded in a link, of course), it sent "Genius/Idiot&&mash;Current Thoughts" which resulted, instead of Genius/Idiot—Current Thoughts, in Genius/Idiot—Current Thoughts. Not what I wanted.
Of course, the easy thing to do here would just be to give up and change the department blog names, to something like Current Thoughts or Genius/Idiot--Current Thoughts. But I’m not well known for doing the easy thing; I wanted it pretty. Instead, I spent many long days over a period of several months—most of last year, really—learning enough UNIX to do this by hand on my own computer (the Mac is now based on a UNIX operating system, in case you didn’t know). In the end, I had to go to an incredible rigamarole in order to save my silly em dash. Here’s the new setup (this replaces step 6 in Me? Blogging?):
6. Blogger emails the post to an email account I have set up on my own computer (I have a static domain name provided by staticcling.org). It comes in, is handed off to Procmail for processing, which hands it off to formail to modify the header so that Blogger would take it back (took forever to figure that bit out), then hands it off again to sed for lots of reasonably complicated text processing, to make it look like it used to look before Blogger broke it (Blogger had changed some style stuff as well). Procmail then sends it to Postfix, a UNIX mail server, which shoots it back off to Blogger.
This was at least as hard as it sounds to figure out how to do. I could never have done it without the Procmail Quick Start and a nifty program called Postfix Enabler. I’m cheap; I fought with .conf files and a bunch of stuff I don’t even remember anymore (God help me when I need to change computers; I have no idea how I did all this) for days before I finally gave up and paid the $10 for Postfix Enabler (a Mac front-end for Postfix). I was a fool. What I failed to do in two or three days, Postfix Enabler did in two or three clicks. I love the Mac ☺.
Of course, the easy thing to do here would just be to give up and change the department blog names, to something like Current Thoughts or Genius/Idiot--Current Thoughts. But I’m not well known for doing the easy thing; I wanted it pretty. Instead, I spent many long days over a period of several months—most of last year, really—learning enough UNIX to do this by hand on my own computer (the Mac is now based on a UNIX operating system, in case you didn’t know). In the end, I had to go to an incredible rigamarole in order to save my silly em dash. Here’s the new setup (this replaces step 6 in Me? Blogging?):
6. Blogger emails the post to an email account I have set up on my own computer (I have a static domain name provided by staticcling.org). It comes in, is handed off to Procmail for processing, which hands it off to formail to modify the header so that Blogger would take it back (took forever to figure that bit out), then hands it off again to sed for lots of reasonably complicated text processing, to make it look like it used to look before Blogger broke it (Blogger had changed some style stuff as well). Procmail then sends it to Postfix, a UNIX mail server, which shoots it back off to Blogger.
This was at least as hard as it sounds to figure out how to do. I could never have done it without the Procmail Quick Start and a nifty program called Postfix Enabler. I’m cheap; I fought with .conf files and a bunch of stuff I don’t even remember anymore (God help me when I need to change computers; I have no idea how I did all this) for days before I finally gave up and paid the $10 for Postfix Enabler (a Mac front-end for Postfix). I was a fool. What I failed to do in two or three days, Postfix Enabler did in two or three clicks. I love the Mac ☺.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Three things
- I’ve redated all the posts on the main page to match when they were originally posted. Some were out of order because I had posted some new items before I reposted old items.
- The email subscribe link on Journal Entries was broken; it wrongly subscribed to Current Thoughts instead. Fixed.
- Er…I forget what the third thing was. Except…don’t forget to subscribe! Oh, and if you’re a close friend, don’t forget to log into and friend me at LiveJournal; stuff too personal to go here is likely to go there.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Blog is back
(updated below)
The refurbishing of Genius/Idiot is complete, and I hope to resume posting on a semi-regular basis. As mentioned previously, there are two Department pages, Current Thoughts and Journal Entries. All posts from these two pages are amalgamated onto the main Genius/Idiot page. Each of the three blog pages has a Subscription link on it that works for that blog only, so if you only wish to be updated about current writings, only subscribe to Current Thoughts, if you only wish to see updates on my old journal entries, subscribe to Journal Entries, and if you want both, just subscribe to the main Genius/Idiot page.
I’ve re-enabled Anonymous commenting, but please don’t comment without at least leaving a nickname and URL or email address, or something to indicate who you are; I hate guessing. Plus, if you log in, you can subscribe to further comments on that post, which is pretty cool.
The main Genius/Idiot page has some older entries that people who have followed in this blog in the past may have seen before on top; I’ll move them down to their proper place before long, but people who have only looked at my blog in the last few months and not before haven’t seen these posts before. Some posts that should be new to everybody are at the top of Current Thoughts.
If you’ve never visited my blog before, I’d appreciate if you took a look and see what you think. Please leave comments on any posts you find interesting.
Thanks!
Update: June 18, 2013
I’ve disabled Anonymous commenting due to some spam comments, but OpenID commenting is still available.
The refurbishing of Genius/Idiot is complete, and I hope to resume posting on a semi-regular basis. As mentioned previously, there are two Department pages, Current Thoughts and Journal Entries. All posts from these two pages are amalgamated onto the main Genius/Idiot page. Each of the three blog pages has a Subscription link on it that works for that blog only, so if you only wish to be updated about current writings, only subscribe to Current Thoughts, if you only wish to see updates on my old journal entries, subscribe to Journal Entries, and if you want both, just subscribe to the main Genius/Idiot page.
I’ve re-enabled Anonymous commenting, but please don’t comment without at least leaving a nickname and URL or email address, or something to indicate who you are; I hate guessing. Plus, if you log in, you can subscribe to further comments on that post, which is pretty cool.
The main Genius/Idiot page has some older entries that people who have followed in this blog in the past may have seen before on top; I’ll move them down to their proper place before long, but people who have only looked at my blog in the last few months and not before haven’t seen these posts before. Some posts that should be new to everybody are at the top of Current Thoughts.
If you’ve never visited my blog before, I’d appreciate if you took a look and see what you think. Please leave comments on any posts you find interesting.
Thanks!
Update: June 18, 2013
I’ve disabled Anonymous commenting due to some spam comments, but OpenID commenting is still available.
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