This book was my first experience with writing by Kurt Vonnegut. His writing, at least in this book, is very original and unconventional. The “Timequake” according to the dust jacket is an event where on February 13th, 2001, everyone is thrust back to February 17th, 1991. Vonnegut treats this as a contraction of the Universe, not simply time travel in the traditional sense. In many time travel stories, the characters look for ways “to put right what once went wrong,” a la Quantum Leap. Vonnegut doesn’t give the characters in this story that opportunity. Everyone is forced to live their lives on autopilot, doing the exact same things they did before, but with the knowledge of what was to come.

I found this angle quite troubling at first, because how boring would it be to have to live almost 10 years all over again without free will? Vonnegut does quite a bit with it by adding a few more twists. In the prologue, he explains that one of the main characters, Kilgore Trout, is his alter ego. Apparently, this character shows up quite a bit in his writing, however in this book, Vonnegut is a character as well. To top it off, the book supposedly started out as a first draft that was scrapped then rewritten to be finished in the final form. I’m not certain if that really happened, or was just part of the book. Confusing right? He covers this in the prologue under the guise of explanation, but looking back I think it was just a successful attempt to keep me off balance.

The final part of the book is about what happens when free will kicks back in. Can you imagine being a puppet with yourself as the puppet master suddenly able to do whatever you want? Kilgore Trout is one of the few, if not only, people that can cope with the situation. Most people freeze up, not able to decide what to do next. So that is the basic plot of the book, all laid out on the dust jacket and the first couple pages that make up the prologue. What is the point of reading it then? For me, the story really didn’t seem to be the focus of this book. It was just a framework for Vonnegut to use as a way to talk about random topics ranging from why semicolons suck, how electronic books don’t measure up to physical ones, or why Chicago is better than New York.

A lot of these observations are just thrown in randomly, confirming my belief that Vonnegut’s goal is to keep the reader off balance. For example, chapter 43 begins with this:

Question: What is the white stuff in bird poop?
Answer: That is bird poop, too.

With himself as a character, the lines between fiction and real life were sufficiently blurred. I really didn’t know much about Vonnegut, so I found myself looking researching at random points to see what was fiction or what was real. The other characters were interesting as well, but I found myself fascinated by how Vonnegut used Trout poke fun at himself. I didn’t realize until writing this review that this was actually the last fiction novel written by Vonnegut. I’m not sure that was the best way to get exposed to a new author, but I’m definitely interested in reading more by him, so it worked out for the best after all. I enjoyed this book, and would highly recommend it. If you’ve never read anything by Vonnegut, it wouldn’t hurt to start with this one.

If I remember correctly, I saw Contact (the movie) in the theater when it came out. I enjoyed it and always wondered how it compared to the book. It turned out that my future wife owned the book, but I didn’t get around reading it until now. Of course movies rarely ever measure up to the novels they are based on, and this was no exception. Don’t get me wrong, the movie was good, however it just scratched upon the surface of what the novel contains.

The main character, Ellie, is a radio astronomer that eventually becomes part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). One night the project stumbles upon an unmistakably non-random signal. Initially, it just seems to be that the signal is just a repeating list of prime numbers. Upon closer inspection, scientists uncover many layers to the signal by calculating wave modulation and other ways that I don’t remember. Anyway, the movie skips over many of the steps leading up to the discovery that the message really contains instructions to make something.

One of the more interesting themes is the selfishness of the U.S. government. The officials are worried that other countries might gain some type of military advantage if they build this “Machine” first. The scientists already determined early one that decoding the message was impossible without worldwide cooperation due to the origin of the signal and rotation of the Earth. The government hesitantly cooperated with the “Machine Counsel” in piecing the message together, but they wanted to keep the nature of the message secret as long as possible.

One interesting thing to me about reading Science Fiction is how often new ideas become a reality. In this story, a man named Sol Hadden developed a technology called Adnix. This chip would mute the sound on the TV when commercials appeared. It detected the increase in volume that many advertisers built into their ads. This book came out in 1985, and I’ve looked around to see if such a thing was in use back then, but haven’t been able to. I know for a fact that today there are software programs that can detect and automatically remove commercials from recorded TV. Sagan might not have been the first person to think of this, but he was definitely ahead of his time.

I thoroughly enjoyed Contact, and don’t think that the book was spoiled for me by seeing the movie first. Carl Sagan did a good job of walking me through all sorts of mathematical and scientific concepts some of which include black holes, relativity, number theory, pattern recognition, and cryptography. He also eloquently addresses some of the economic, political, religious ramifications of the worldwide goal to make the Machine. Sagan is an excellent writer, and I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.

Last weekend my wife and I watched 2012 with a couple of friends. We planned on making some chocolate martinis, and I have to say they definitely improved the movie watching experience. About a quarter of the way through the movie we were wondering when the introduction of new characters was going to end. Most of them are empty with no depth whatsoever. I can’t tell you anything about the main character’s ex-wife other than she divorced him and is now with a plastic surgeon. Don’t bother watching this if you are expecting a gripping story.

There are many other disaster movies with better plot, character development, and humor. Independence Day comes to mind. Anyway, after we realized we were watching a bad movie, we decided to figure out how to make the best of it. Eventually we decided to take a drink when someone narrowly avoided death. This required us to stop the movie twice to make more martinis. As for the plot, basically the solar flares in 2012 are supposed to destabilize the Earth’s core. The crust will shift and there will be floods, volcanoes, and earthquakes. People secretly go around gathering investment money in the amount of $1,000,000,000 Euro for “tickets” aboard what turn out to be modern day Noah’s Arks. For those interesting in the martini recipe, see below.

Measurements are in ounces or each measure is approximately 2/3 of a standard shot glass.

2.0 creme de cocoa (whatever is cheapest)
1.5 Godiva chocolate liquer (brand is important)
1.0 vanilla vodka (any brand, we’ve used Svedka and Smirnoff before)
splash (.5) half and half

I typically double the recipe and it will just barely fit into a cocktail shaker depending on how much ice you use. I like doing that because it makes the measurements easy: 4, 3, 2, 1. Each batch makes 3-4 servings depending on how generous you are with the portions. The ingredients aren’t cheap but you can make quite a drinks. Please post your thoughts in the comments if you’ve tried the recipe!

A while back I came across this game called World of Goo that turned out to be well worth the $20 I paid for it. Now it is part of a special deal with 4 other games where you can name your price. As part of other indie packs, I already own two copies of World of Goo and one of Gish. I’m definitely going to check out the other 3 games. Proceeds go toward developers or charity depending on how you want to split it up. The sale ends 5/10/10

Check it out!

–update–

If you missed the deal, most of the games have now gone open source! Check out Aquaria, Gish, Penumbra, and Lugaru!

A while back a co-worker of mine gave me A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller. It sat on a shelf for a few years until I recently got around to reading it. I didn’t really know much about the book when it was given to me, but since then I’ve seen it on a few “Best of SF” book lists. It also won the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. There are three parts to the book, each taking place a few hundred years apart.

The setting of the first part takes begins in the 26th century. At some unspecified time in the past, the world all but destroyed in a global nuclear war. Almost all the secrets of modern technology were lost in what would later be described as a purge. The mob of humans left alive banded together to destroy all knowledge that could lead to another nuclear war. There were book burnings and hangings of scientists. The story follows group of monks that have built an abbey in the desert to house the Memorabilia as they refer to books, technical manuals, and other bits of information that are uncovered over time. Their patron is a man by the name of Leibowitz, who was hung during the purge just after the first nuclear war.

The book opens with Brother Francis out in the desert on a vigil of solitude for Lent. He encounters a wanderer that through some odd circumstances leads to the discovery of a fallout shelter. He finds a box full of items, two of which are what appear to be a grocery list and an electrical schematic. Francis excited because he suspects the box belonged to Liebowitz. Once the abbot heard of the events, he was more interested in the pilgrim. Rumors take off, and eventually people claim that the wanderer was actually Leibowitz. I kept looking forward to finding out what was actually in the fallout shelter, but that mystery was basically shoved into the background.

Miller instead focuses on the politics of how New Rome scrutinizes the account of Francis and the “Wanderer.” I was a bit disturbed by the cruelty of the abbot and inquisitor. Francis is eventually deemed credible, but not before quite an ordeal. The rest of this first part follows Francis in his appointment to the copy room and eventual creation of an artwork based on a “Circuit Diagram by Leibowitz.”

The second part starts at year 3174 with the scientific community gaining some momentum. A few new discoveries have taken place, and word of the cache of documents at the abbey of Leibowitz catches the attention of one of the best scientists. He puts in a request to have a good portion of the Memorabilia sent to New Rome for examination, but the reigning abbot refuses on grounds of keeping the records safe.

The third part is starts at year 3781 with humanity having many space colonies. They rediscovered nuclear power, and with that nuclear weapons. The threat of nuclear war is very strong. The order of monks is prepared to send the good portion of the Memorabilia away from Earth if war breaks out, because New Rome is certain the next war will utterly destroy the world. War does resurface, and the abbey becomes the focal point of a humanitarian effort for fallout victims.

Most of this last section is a commentary on euthanasia. The current abbot learns that one of the aid workers might hand out “red tickets,” government sanctioned approval euthanasia. They are good for entrance to a mercy camp for those deemed to be the worst cases. Otherwise, they are doomed to suffer a horrible and painful death by radiation sickness. The abbot makes the worker promise not to hand one out or else he will not allow the aid workers to use the abbey. Of course the worker breaks his promise and the abbot flips out when he sees a mother and daughter walking away with red ticket. It becomes his mission to convince the mother not to take the child to the camp. Eventually she does goes anyway, but not without a strong fight by the abbot.

As a science fiction novel, I found this book to be a disappointment. There were some minor elements of SF, but mostly the focus was on church policies and political struggles. I had a very hard time relating to the main characters, because I couldn’t understand why anyone would put up with such torture. I don’t see why serving a higher power needs to involve so much pain and suffering. Overall, the book was quite a bit depressing and frustrating. I kept wanting it to get better, but it never did.

Snowtrooper action figure

I had the opportunity to meet a couple “online” friends this past weekend. I’ve talked to these guys for several years through various online games, instant messaging, Ventrilo/TeamSpeak, and e-mail. Meeting them was a very interesting and enjoyable experience. BrainAlien, a guy I’ve known online since 1999, gave me a Snowtrooper action figure. He knows I’m a huge Star Wars fan, so I really appreciate it. If I ever find my Luke Skywalker in X-Wing suit, I’ll have to have a little battle to relive some childhood moments.

Thanks BrainAlien!

I wasn’t really expecting much when I heard about Surrogates, so waited to watch it until it came out on DVD. From the previews it looked like many other science fiction action films that seem to be pumped out by Hollywood. The main premise of the movie is that humans live their lives through “surrogate” (robot) bodies. I’m a huge fan of Asimov and his robot novels, so this was enough to catch my attention. The human interface is kind of like how control worked in Avatar, but instead of an organic body as the host, it is robotic. I would definitely not classify the surrogates as the cyborgs that Ray Kurzweil thinks we will eventually become.  One of the main advantages to using a surrogate is that the owner is always protected, so in some ways they are better than cyborgs. There was no way for any harm to come to a user, until now.

Tom Greer, played by Bruce Willis, is in charge of investigating the destruction of a couple of surrogates. This is usually not that big of a deal, but one of the owners is found dead. Whoever wrote the script really wasn’t trying anything new as far as the murder/mystery approach is concerned. I was expecting a lot more action based on the previews that I saw. It felt like I was watching for 40 minutes before things started to get moving. This move was all around average in most respects. Nothing really stood out. It wasn’t bad, but not great.

One completely unrelated observation is that I found Bruce Willis’ upper lip (stash zone) alarmingly long. It looked almost twice the size I’d normally expect. I think of most of the roles I’ve seen him in, he’s got a beard of some sort, so that kind of hides that feature of his face. Am I alone here? Check out the pic on IMDB

Remember at the end of The Empire Strikes Back where Luke gets his hand chopped off by Vader? During one of the closing scenes, a robot doctor finishes up installing a replacement hand for Luke.

Luke Skywalker's Cyborg Hand

Kevin Warwick did something similar as an experiment, but without the whole getting his hand chopped off step. Instead he put an electrode in his hand that could transmit commands to a robotic hand through radio waves. This was done back in 2002, and somehow I never heard of it. I’m sure Ray Kurzweil would be proud. Check out the video below for more information about how he did this, and some other advances like using rat brain cells to power robots. If you are at all interested in robotics, cyborgs, or AI, you’ll be in for a treat.

OK, so a long time ago I was excited to see the Slave Leia girls on Deal or No Deal. Watching it with my wife was somewhat awkward, but she was kind enough to humor me. One of my good friends over at What the Photo sent me an interesting stumble today featuring, get this, a belly-dancing slave Princess Leia! It looks like Amira Sa’id has been doing this for some time now. How I’ve not come across this until now is a complete mystery. For more information, including some interviews and other pictures and videos, visit Amira’s website at http://www.amiradance.com/LeiaLive.html
Check it out!

via Nerd Salad

Borderlands by 2K Games is a unique mashup of and FPS and RPG. The game is rated M for a reason, there is nonstop killing and gore. If you liked Diablo 2, and enjoy FPS games, you’d love Borderlands.  They both have three playthroughs with the same missions, but higher difficulty. Also, the loot engine has random loot with 17,750,000 different possibilities. Part of the fun is the unending quest for better loot. Overall, the variety of missions is much more in-depth in Borderlands. You can play single player or multi, but with Borderlands your single player character is compatible with multiplayer games.

Last week I finally finished the first playthrough with a couple of friends that have mastered the game already. They were kind enough to start out with level 1 along with me and work through the story missions. One of my friends has beaten the game five times and still enjoys it. I think that is a testament to the quality of the game. Most of the missions are NOT just kill XX and come back, much like I remembered World of Warcraft to be. There are a few early missions like that, but overall most of them are much more complex.

I still think it is kind of funny that Borderlands takes place on the wasteland planet of Pandora. This planet is about the direct opposite of the Pandora from Avatar. Much of the landscape reminds me of Mad Max, and there are a few references to the movie it in the game as well. Another aspect that is different is that the gravity is lower. It takes a while to get used to the “moon jumps,” but you need to master them in order to complete some of the quests. There are quite a few that require some skillful hopping around to find pieces of loot. Located somewhere in Pandora is “The Vault” that only opens up every 200 years. Supposedly there is advanced alien technology, but nobody knows for sure. You play as one of 4 classes of Vault hunters guided by a ghostly girl that secretly communicates with you.

One frustrating aspect of Borderlands is that this is a console port. It is out for Xbox 360 and PS3, but this review is for the PC version. The UI can be frustrating for gamers that are used to playing PC games. If you have and Xbox controller for Windows, you can just plug that in and play without changing any settings. I’m a mouse and keyboard FPS player, so I did quite a bit of customizing. Hosting multiplayer games uses Gamespy for matchmaking, and it is rather difficult for users to host if they are not familiar with changing settings in routers. I found the following thread helpful for opening up the ports needed to host games. Some people simply aren’t able to open ports up, so that can throw in some snags. That said, hosting doesn’t work for me the first time in many cases. If I have been playing for a while, I have to exit out and re-launch the game and then my friends can connect. Also, it is not possible to join a private match on the host. They have to send you an invite, or you have to wait until another friend on your list joins, then you can join off of them. I’m sure this is a bug, and hope it is fixed eventually.

Another frustration is the game map. Having played Star Wars Galaxies in the past, I took for granted how useful an overlay of the map is. If you want to check where you are in Borderlands you have to pop up the map. If you are in a car, it stops you. There is a compass with a flashing diamond for your destination, but the terrain on most of the areas makes getting there anything but a straight shot. One workaround I found was to have a friend ride as a gunner to keep the map open and give directions, “Turn left, turn right, go straight.” It is kind of comical at first, but it works.

On the topic of driving, the controls are not anything like vehicles in other FPS games. It took a while to get used to, but I still find myself driving into rocks now and again, especially when using the turbo boost. If your car flips over, you have to hop out and melee and it to bounce it around and eventually flip over. Another quirk is that if you have 3 people and only 1 car, you can push the third person along in front of the car at full speed, and even boosting. The entertainment value of doing this doesn’t seem to wear off.

One of our crashes

Aside from a few problems, the game is very well done. The multiplayer is balanced so that the more that play, the harder the enemies get. I only wish there was an option for more than four players. On many occasions I’ve had 5-6 friends on, and we can’t all fit in one game. The great thing about multiplayer is that each class has unique class mods they can equip that can help the team. Each mission is different, requiring a unique mix of skills and weapons. The format is fairly open ended, with main story arc missions spawning off smaller side missions. Also, you don’t have to do all the missions in order, just the main story arc ones.

As far as the graphics are concerned, I don’t think I have ever seen a game quite like this one. The environment is cell shaded with hand painted textures. The characters are not quite 3D, but also not 2D. It’s kind of hard to explain. Take a look at some of the trailers and you will see what I mean. The engine seems to run fine on my Nvidia 260GTX on full quality, so I don’t think it is quite as resource hungry as some of the newer games that have been released recently. I highly recommend this game. There are two downloadable content “expansions,” but I haven’t played any of those yet.