Mini Book Reviews

In lieu of a real post, here are some recent books I have read and my opinions about them:

* [*The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt* by Edmund Morris](http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html%3FASIN=0375756787%26tag=ws%26lcode=xm2%26cID=2025%26ccmID=165953%26location=/o/ASIN/0375756787%253FSubscriptionId=1MW1MMWX4EMWX0T93DR2). I’m not sure a biography _can_ get better than this. It helps that TR was an extraordinary individual and a wonderful patriot. This book starts at Teddy’s birth and ends just as he was going to be president. The only bad thing about this book is it’s daunting size, but it never gets boring.

* [*Undaunted Courage* by Stephen Ambrose ](http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html%3FASIN=074347788X%26tag=ws%26lcode=xm2%26cID=2025%26ccmID=165953%26location=/o/ASIN/074347788X%253FSubscriptionId=1MW1MMWX4EMWX0T93DR2). Another great nonfiction book. Ambrose following Meriwether Lewis and Thomas Jefferson up to and including the great Lewis and Clark Expedition and then Lewis’ years afterwards. I hadn’t read an Ambrose book before, and it was a very good read. The beginning preparations got a little long, but once the journey started the pace really picked up. It was really an exciting adventure story, even though I knew how it was going to turn out.

* [*The War Of The Flowers*](http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html%3FASIN=075640181X%26tag=ws%26lcode=xm2%26cID=2025%26ccmID=165953%26location=/o/ASIN/075640181X%253FSubscriptionId=1MW1MMWX4EMWX0T93DR2). I was highly disappointed in this one. Williams gift is world-building and he did an excellent job in this one — the land of Faerie has become an urban wasteland. And the story was good. The disappointing part was that it filled with too much brooding by the main character. It could have been half as long and twice as good. About 75% through, I figured out most of what was happening, but it was at that point where the story started dragging again. Not sure I can recommend this, unless you are into really unique fantasy worlds.

* [*The Prestige* by Christopher Priest ](http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html%3FASIN=0765356171%26tag=ws%26lcode=xm2%26cID=2025%26ccmID=165953%26location=/o/ASIN/0765356171%253FSubscriptionId=1MW1MMWX4EMWX0T93DR2). I really can’t say enough about this novel of rival magicians at the turn of the 20th Century. The style was unique — it’s told by reading one magician’s journal and then the other. It’s a difficult format to pull off, but Priest did a wonderful job. Of course, there is a series of twists at the end, but they make perfect sense. I haven’t seen the movie and I’m not sure it can be half as good as the book.

I Hate The Time Changes

Since my meeting got out early, I can finally wax a little about one of my pet peeves — Daylight Savings time. Or, actually, the time changes that come with it.

Maybe it is because it was a busy weekend, or maybe because “falling back” was later this year, but I can’t seem to get adjusted.  Instead of enjoying my extra hour of sleep, I’m up at my normal time, which is an hour earlier than it used to be.  So, instead of getting up at 6am, I’m awake at 5am.  And I’m dog tired at 9:30pm, an hour before I usually go to bed.  Heck, on Monday I fell asleep on the couch watching TV and rarely ever happens to me!

Last night I stayed up until midnight working on some stuff and hoping that the late hour would help me get my internal clock back in order.  Nope — I was still awake at 5am!!!  If I can force myself to stay awake until 10:30pm tonight, maybe I can actually sleep longer.

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One Post, Many Topics

This is one of those posts where I just utter some random things that is going on. This is really just so I only have to make one post instead of a bunch of little posts.

* I had the flu last week and then it turned into a cold. Oh goodie. I’m finally on the mend so I’m not taking NyQuil tonight. And, yes, Leah got it from me but not as severe. The jury is still out if Gina will get it or not.
* Tonight was the first official meeting of our citizen’s patrol. Actually, our neighborhood used to have one a long time ago, but it slowly sputtered out. Recent thefts and graffiti have prompted a come back. I decided that it’s a good way for me to get plugged into our neighbors. I have my first patrol in a few weeks — I’ll report how much fun it is to spend four hours with a stranger in a car while driving around the neighborhood.
* I’ve been working on a Django project for a while and set it up like my web host said — Apache proxying to Lighttpd which is talking to a FastCGI/[flup](http://trac.saddi.com/flup) process. This worked great for months, but suddenly and randomly, the site stops responding. It seems that Lighttpd forgets how to talk to Flup. So now I got to get Flup and Apache to talk to each other directly. It’s against my web provider’s recommendation but their recommendation ain’t workin’ no more.
* Our bus didn’t seem to want to make it out of second gear on the way home tonight. Once it got out of second (or up the hill) it was fine. But I seriously thought that the back wheels were going to fly off the way we were jerking.
* I like WOWT’s news, but I can’t stand the fact that they refer to [their website](http://www.wowt.com/) as “their web channel” . It’s the 21st century! Most people know what a web site is. And you aren’t broadcasting it over the air waves, so how can it be a channel?
* I’ve been using [Mercurial](http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/) for some of my personal projects and I really like it. Distributed source control is definitely for me! Yes, this requires a whole, dedicated post but if you feel that you are unsatisfied with Subversion or CVS, give Mercurial a shot.
* I’ve found myself drifting back to [Plastic.com](http://www.plastic.com) again. I’m not sure why. I think I’ve only visited it three times in the last four or five years (but was an active lurker before that). I left because their RSS feeds were broken and I couldn’t keep up. I *think* I’m back because I missed the smart commentary. Even though I disagree with 80% of people’s opinions. But I always get thoughts from different perspectives than my own.
* My last few blog posts have been done through Emacs. I grabbed [the patched webblogger.el here](http://jwickers.wordpress.com/2007/09/20/webloggerel-enhanced/) and it works great. I just write my posts in [Markdown](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax.php) and “save” the post and it goes to my blog. I haven’t fired up TextMate in a weeks. It seems I finally got the perfect Emacs setup.

String Join in a Shell Script

I googled around for how to join a string in a shell and I found a very cool recipe:

function str_join() {
echo “@*”|tr ‘ ‘ ‘:’
}

I’ve never used `tr` before. This goes back on the list of old-school UNIX commands I need to do more research on.

What is your caption for this photo?


[The real story is here.](http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07191/800583-85.stm). From [jwz](http://jwz.livejournal.com/809004.html).