More Paul

Oh, Douglas Coupland. When it comes to the act of writing, he must make self-described serious practitioners scowl. His characters all have the same voice: DeeDee sounds like Rogers sounds like Bethany (sounds like Liz from Eleanor Rigby sounds like Ethan and Kaitlin from JPod…), and it’s a voice not everybody loves. Despite the good-natured warning I gave my dad before handing him JPod, he still could barely finish a chapter without going This man is a different human being…

He’s not wrong: you can tell he either loves or hates his editor. While most fledgling writers will take what they can get at the price of heavy editing, it seems that he’s well-established or confident enough to write what he pleases (which, like most of us would be if unrestrained, would include lots of rambling. See: this blog). It wouldn’t take much effort for me to fill a room with people who would put down his book (any of them) and dismiss it due to the style.

That being said, it’s a good thing for me that I can happily swallow his aesthetic. I finished The Gum Thief last week in my attempt to pick up more fiction (by picking a safety author of mine), and found myself quite pleased with it.

This shouldn’t be too surprising: he’s got many of the same storytelling qualities I’ve been told I have. He uses very graphic and unusual imagery to get his point across, his characters are chronically depressed but only express it in humorous and slightly pathetic asides. He also likes to play games with the medium he’s in, in this case, including a novel within a novel within a novel (and a really, really funny one at that).

A cute little diatribe of his on modern fiction.

Because of his writing style, for first-timers I would recommend the ballsiest book of his I know, which is still JPod. The other books of his that I’ve read are shorter and far tamer, so you don’t get quite as much kick out of them. Then again, that might be what you want. I’ll keep reading him.

Speaking of unorthodox writing styles, I decided to pick up Nicola Barker’s Darkmans again. I got about 40% of the way through it (388 pages) before dropping it to do some coding. Almost as if to prove there is a fine line between edgy and hideous, most of the things I like about Douglas Coupland are the same thing other people seem to like about Darkmans: her writing style, her wild and zany characters, the incredibly modern world.

Maybe it’s like a weird reverse-Officeing (where the British Office was funnier than the North American one… this time it goes the other way), but she just doesn’t got it. Yes, her characters are wild, but not funny enough to justify reading so many pages of what big losers they are. Ha-ha Nicola! Look, Kane is a prescription drug dealer and Gaffar is a salad-fearing Arab with too much testosterone! Look how crass and mean they are to each other! How hilarious!

And the writing style is stuttured at best, realistically speaking just vapid. You lose track of what she’s trying to tell at any given moment you because she just can’t restrain her 6 meta-interjections per sentence. I know I abuse parenthesis for my interjections (on my blog, not a novel), and would rather see her take a risk, the book only needs to be about 60% as long.

Maybe its just weakness, but I already have a backup book in mind if I choose to drop Darkmans again.

Also, redesign on the way. This was cute, but not at all user friendly or browser-compliant. Hope it works…

(Also, I didn’t mean to disable comments. I’m having some technical difficulties from upgrading to WordPress 2.5.1, which is giving me trouble. That’s also why these posts are all uncategorized…)

After a too-long departure, I finally got back to reading some fiction this weekend, and just for the hell of it I’ll mention a non-fiction that I’m running through…

Ian McEwan’s Amsterdam was unquestionably good. While I think his writing in Amsterdam contained some of his most precise and articulate prose in my experience reading him (Saturday,On Chesil Beach) the story itself packed a little less punch than usual, especially the end.

When Charly finished the novel in a laundromat, she closed the book and let out a big “Huh!?” I wondered: “What could cause her to have that specific reaction?” It was an indescribable, rare case of befuddlement, and not a whole lot confuses her (especially literary). And now I know both what her reaction was and that it was completely justified. It’s similar to trying to describe watching the new Indiana Jones movie:

Annalisa: So Paul, how was the new Indiana Jones?
Paul: It was fun… but absolutely ridiculous.
Annalisa: What does that mean?
Paul: I means exactly that. It was tons of fun… but completely ridiculous. You’ll know when you see.

—Robert and Annalisa see the movie—

Paul: Did you enjoy it?
Annalisa: You were right. And there isn’t another way to describe it.

All that being said, he’s crammed a lot of wonderful, quotable snippets in the lithe 193 pages, and there’s certainly a lot of material to chew on afterwards. His descriptions of a composer’s creative process (like the brian surgeon’s thought process in Saturday) make the book worth the read: his fictional characters describe the fruits of their labor so beautifully you’ll want to give up or match them when you talk about what you do.

After this, the raquetball game in Saturday, and the entirety of On Chesil Beach, it helped me pinpoint what I think is McEwan’s greatest strength: description of a character’s internal state at any given time. The most entertaining parts of Crime & Punishment for me were Dostoevsky’s long, rant-bordering high-resolution snapshots of Raskolnikov’s internal state. Rather than write “Raskolnikov felt like shit” (and make the next 300 pages redundant) he could spin the most lovely metaphors and phrases, and you’ll swear you knew the exact type of shit that Raskolnikov felt like.

McEwan does it similarly, but rather than wax on in 4-page units, he keeps it to a couple of structurally unbreakable paragraphs.

I read a lot tech books: In trying to close the gap with others who’ve been programming since they were 8 (or 9, or anywhere < 20), I’ve been manically reading textbooks and instuctional books on unfamiliar technologies. After reading a bunch of them, you see what a fine art it really is to teach via text: most of the books I read are great if you already know what they’re trying to teach you. Once you get into unfamiliar territory however, most authors forget what you don’t know and start teaching it more as if it were a review, and not a lesson.

Not all of them do this. Cascading Style Sheets by Håkon Lie and Bert Bos does an excellent job of introducing what Style Sheets are and why you should use them. Mastering Regular Expressions by Jeffrey Friedl provides clear explanations and good examples to get you thinking properly about which wildcards to use, and when. Learning Javascript, by Shelley Powers, however, is one of the most useless books ever written, and a huge waste of my money and expectations.

I tell you that to tell you this: Michael Sipser’s Introduction to the Theory of Computation (the textbook for CS051) is a complete ace. It teaches computation theory in a way you can understand, and (this is the weird part) leaves you hungering for more. Most textbooks are run-of-the-mill, “I’m-writing-this-for-extra-bucks” 1000-page behemoths that recite some concepts, give you some vanilla problems and call it a day.

Sipser clearly cares about his material, and lovingly works to make you care. While he does assume some knowledge of material (basic set theory, induction, &etc), it’s remarkably accessible. For example, I was able to explain to my best friend Danny (who only studied a pancake of CS in high school) a version of the Halting Problem (Note: this “proof” I’m linking was sketched up pretty quickly, so isn’t 100% as precise as it would be if I were handing it in).

On the first lecture, when the professor was going over the details of the class, a student asked “Do we actually need the textbook for course?” She responded appropriately: “You need this textbook… just for you.”

I saw Wall-E this weekend, and I think I’m in love. Said briefly, I’ll repeat what I mentioned in my New Year’s Post: what’s not to love in a movie with robots, animation, and mime?

The first 40-minutes or so present a ballet: almost no dialogue, each little sketch is reminiscent of performances lost since Chaplin. With Ben Burtt doing sound (this is the man who invented the lightsaber sound), the world of Wall-E and his little cockroach is the most wonderful wasteland you’ve ever been a part of.

Of course, it’s the details that count: Wall-E feeds his cockroach with Twinkies that haven’t decomposed in 700 years, Fred Willard as the president of Buy’n'Large, Wall-E putting his dirty treads in the other robots’ face. There isn’t a moment in the movie that wasn’t expertly rendered, textured, lit, and acted.

I also saw The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a movie following top retro video gamers in the quest for the best Donkey Kong score. Often documentaries are compared to magnifying glasses: they magnify what we can see in a subject and allow us to observe new patterns. But truly good documentaries serve a purpose more like a prism: revealing an entire spectrum of unexplored material that changes your perception completely.

The way they explore this subculture in the story of Steve Wiebe, while not entirely fair (and implies certain things that aren’t entirely true) is pretty sublime. Having followed the Warcraft III and Smash scenes for a while, it’s good to see a movie that acknowledges the hard work gamers put into it, but also highlighting the need for more objectivity and transparency. As the industry grows, I guess.

Years ago, I read an interview in Electronic Gaming Monthly with Billy Mitchell, and even then it was clear the guy was a class-A jerk. I’m so glad this movie takes the side it does ^_^

Moreover, I think I found a senior thesis: I kind of want to build a robot that achieves the world record in Donkey Kong (or at least plays it somewhat successfully). It would be hard, but if we could teach robots to play clarinet, guitar, and piano, well let’s teach them video games! I’ll work on soccer later.

Finally, a funny list of security-related patents. Also, an oil spill of bees in Canada.

In 8th grade I got runner-up in a school-wide public speaking competition for my speech Speedos vs. Swimming Trunks. That’s when I learned the wonderful power of pairing together unlikely objects and/or comparing things only distantly related. Here are a few little vs. battles that are incredibly useless, but have taken lots of my attention over the years:

Vampires vs. Zombies

Actual Question: Would you rather be escaping from Zombies or Vampires? On this I come very strongly on the side of zombies.

Yes, they’re ugly. But that aside, there are so many perks! Think of escape: it involves some minor acrobatics, environmental awareness (look! A fuel canister!) and just a lot more carnage. While you can plow through dozens of zombies with an axe or some conveniently located firearms, vampires require a stake when they sleep. Moreover, do you really think that a vampire will be deterred by a cross or a garlic wreath? Sure.

The second major point in the vampire/zombie showdown involves losing: if you lose against zombies, you join the fun! There are worse fates than finally having a legitimate excuse to go Braaaaiiins! Braaaaiiins!

Contrast with vampires: if you lose to vampires, you live in eternity hungering for the people you love, never seeing sunlight, and in a pact with the devil.

While there is no one sweeter than Alucard (I’ve been drafting a SOTN post pretty much forever), the verdict remains in favor of the concious-impaired. Zombies win.

Hellboy vs. The Incredible Hulk

Most people I know either hated or (more likely, since they didn’t see it) made fun of Hellboy. Before Guillermo del Toro was The visionary director of Pan’s Labyrinth, he was the director of Hellboy, and did a pretty damn good job of it. Hellboy is essentially the Rocky Balboa of superheroes: he takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’. And his smartass quips put Peter Parker to shame.

The year before however, Ang Lee’s really awful Hulk came out. While the movie was garbage (sorry Eric Bana), the CGI was fun, and seeing Hulk jump the distances he did make me realize he, too, could take a licking.

So at the end of the day, who would win in a battle? My money’s still on Hellboy, but only because that’s what I want. The new Edward Norton Hulk… this changes the matchup.

Link vs. Cloud Strife

While most of these pointless diversions are by my own creation, this one (easily the closest match) came from the assistance of another. Who would win in the fight? Cloud Strife or Link?

I personally think The Legend of Zelda has been the most fun and consistent series in video games, and in no small part to its protagonist Link. You get to name him, he never speaks, but immerses you in the best adventures you’ve ever been a part of. I’ve been spoiled: I know what real limitless role-playing entails (tabletop RPG’s, especially D&D < 4e), but the closest you get to a really open, fulfilling adventure in video games is from Zelda games.

But Cloud! Oh Cloud! He’s such a badass (his thin arms and ridiculous pants!), scored by one of the best soundtracks in games, and against arguably the greatest arch-villian in history! Just like the online Street Fighter II on Xbox Live got more hype than most other games released around it, the dissapointment everyone felt at hearing that FFVII isn’t being remade for the PS3 says something about the power of this game.

There’s really no way to verify this (GameFAQ’s agrees with me!). For nerds, this matchup is a dream come true ^_^