Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Luv all you guys, smile at the world, at yourself and keep your eyes bright and shining.
As a new year’s gift, I give you Forgotten Fragments, an infinitely crass story that I’ve penned. People waiting for Kharke will have to wait further, so sorry! I’m having trouble deciding the focus of the series (big words which mean that I don’t know which direction to continue on) so a rewrite is in order there.
Tags: chaff
Saturday, December 27, 2003
Squirrels call him the jungle beast
Troublemaker
Tinkerer, cooker of bad spongy tastes
Funny (sic) telltale
Up your gullet went his
Concoctions
Down his throat, and then into his
hoarding heart. Spindles of assorted foibles
that doesn’t make hair gray,
But whitens it.
Squirrels aside, (and even them) mistake him
for mischief, but tears do not know prank
from frank hate.
And neither, I believe, does Loki.
Tags: chaff
Saturday, December 27, 2003
If only great movies could be great books! Granted, Taken isn’t an epic movie by any stretch of imagination, but it is one of the major Scifi dramas to hit Television recently, and it could have been a great book. But this, the novel by Thomas H. Cook isn’t what you’re looking for. Perhaps I was unfavorably biased (because I knew the story almost word for word coz I saw the series) but the writing is drab with words and dialogues copied from on screen, and there is hardly any extra material. This is boring, mostly because the whole point of writing a companion book should have beeen to give us something more than the stuff in the series. But this just doesn’t cut it.
Saturday, December 27, 2003
This is the first of the Anne McCaffrey books that I’ve read; I wanted to start with the Dragonriders, but there are more than 10 books in that series, so I decided to let it lie for another day. This book is the second in the Pegasus series, and usually I’m very reluctant to begin with a later book, because then I won’t ever read the earlier books. So two firsts for me with this one; make that three: the first time I’ve read about Mind-Powers (aside from punk literature, but that doesn’t count, usually) I’ll place this book as a tentative liker, I think I recognize this book and it’s writing as that of one which grows on you, as you advance within the series, you’ll learn to love the characters and cry and laugh with them. I also got a very skewed opinion about McCaffrey (regrettably) because this isn’t the best of her writing. That is not to say I didn’t like this book, but I’ve read much better ones (even in the so called punk-genre of Ereading). I’ll place the Pegasus series in a Must-read slot though, since it deals with the Mind, and that I like. Psychohistory anyone?
Saturday, December 27, 2003
Anne Rice is delightfully Victorian in this Vampire drama, and it’s one of the few books in this style that I like - that of a flashback novel. Most of the story is a single person narrative, and every other paragraph starts with a quote, so it’s in no way an easy style to engage readers in, but Rice is wonderful here. I learned to re-love Lestat (pronounced Lesdot, with an emphasis on the second syllable) and the new Vampire introduced: Quinn Blackwood, is unique and infinitely enjoyable. Rice does create great characters. The only flaw perhaps in the novel is the enormous narration throughout the text, however great a writer Rice is, she isn’t able to pull it off quite that effectively; writing this as first person singular could have been much more effective. I liked this.
Friday, December 26, 2003
My uncle and my grandpa are both a little hard of hearing. (Disclaimer: My artistic deviances are added herein)
Uncle: This damn cough just doesn’t go away!
Grandpa: You should just try it again, these times it’s difficult to get a person on the phone.
Uncle: Eh? I was talking about my cough.
Grandpa: Your what?
Uncle (yelling): My cough!
Grandpa: Oh! You should use some Rasnadi, it helps a lot.
Uncle: Oh, but I don’t like inhalers.
Granpa: Huh? I was talking about Rasnadi powder.
Uncle: What?
Grandpa (yelling): Rasnadi!
Uncle: Oh!
And so they go on, acheiving in ten sentences what should be in three, while I sit on a couch nearby, David Gemmel engrossing me with Morningstar, hearing nothing myself.
Tags: chaff
Friday, December 26, 2003
I’m back from my trip and that too just after Christmas. Much longer notes later, but a quick one now to wish you all a very merry Christmas-y weekend.
Tags: chaff
Monday, December 22, 2003
I got back on my bike today. Finally <insert sense of misdirected relief here> - because ever since my little accident on the bike, I’d been banned from it. But my leg is all splendid now, and I can go whizzing around. When I did whiz around today, I discovered that I had missed my sweet little buddy of three years - who I flatter unguardedly by calling it a name that should rightly be accorded to its elder cousin. But what the hell, it’s my scooter, it’s my two legs that can fly.
But before that, I went on my usual round of libraries again. I picked up one Anne McCaffrey - ‘Pegasus in Flight’ which is actually the second in a series, and I digested that today. It’s a pretty good book, and since this is my first taste of McCaffrey (the first time I’ve read her though I’ve heard of the Dragonriders before) I went through it slowly, and found that I liked reading her. Another book I borrowed was a Lestat story from Anne Rice. I’d read and liked the original ‘The Vampire Lestat’ and since I’m part of the way into the book, I think I’ll like this too - though this is a much newer, fatter and bolder book. I picked up a text rendering of Taken, the Speiberg drama that I was telling you about, and my mom is avidly reading that now so I’ll have to hold off for a bit for me to get to that. I also spliced up a few more inconsequential books to pacify my brother, but they are nothing golden.
And why should I need to pacify my brother, you ask? Well, my dear reader, I’m going on a trip to my mother’s house - which is in Chenganoor. So you won’t see me again till this Friday. Since the said Chenganoor (or more specifically, a psuedo-village called Malakkara) doesn’t have the net-web that graces me here, I won’t be able to convey anything to you. Malakkara is an exciting-boring place - I’ll have to tell you about it sometime. Though most of the things that I usually find comforting are absent (and I’m not an outdoors person generally) it’s a different sort of niceness. I’ll also meet my grandpa (my mother’s father) who is quite a character himself. Yes, I’ll tell you about the place, but later. Got to go now, an early day tomorrow. Luv you.
With a hand in my heart, I part.
Tags: chaff
Saturday, December 20, 2003
Deliberately, and elegantly shot in black & white, Schindler’s list brings out the best in Spielberg. I had wanted to watch this movie for eons - I loved it’s music even before I heard of the movie, and I was extremely lucky that I got my hands on a DVD. What’s wonderful about the movie and about Schindler, is how little an emphasis is placed on altruism. Having recently seen and admired The Pianist, I had thought that I had sensitized myself to the Holocaust. But Schindler’s List’s clarity and power is simply amazing. All superlatives here, I loved this. You should watch this one if you haven’t yet.
Tags: chaff
Thursday, December 18, 2003
This is a while ago, but it’s only been a short while since I set up the statistics, so I discovered this while checking the logs. Vysnu.com is a well-designed weblog at Larsholst.info, which itself is one of the most suave designs that I’ve found on the web.
Tags: me outside
Thursday, December 18, 2003
@Amazon | @SFReviews | @Heinlein Book Bin
Lazarus is an old man now, old enough that he wants to die. Well, who can blame him, he’s lived many a millenia too much. And yet, there are many people who have vested interests in his living - after all, the oldest man on Earth should have much to teach his children (many, literally his children since he’s spawned his seed throughout the breathing universe) When he does manage to convince himself to live (with some help from a beautiful woman computer, a seedy rejuvinist, and his diploid twin sisters) the fun begins.
Time Enough for Love has also time enough for the umpteen lives of Lazarus - a person who’s older than anyone should be. It describes how he grows from one culture to another, how he reluctantly shrugs off his Old-Earth education that had till then sexually-repressed him, it talks about the difference between love and sex - Eros and Agape - and it tells how even his lengthened life is not enough for love. The last few hundred pages of this book deal with difficult to resolve issues, incest for one, and multiple loves for another and Heinlein brings about a harmonic fusion of love and sex and everything in between -of morality and of licentiousness - and detailed definitions of ‘incest’, ‘life’, ‘mere sex’, and ‘fun’ that I never expected in a book of this kind. This is an epic, and for all people, this is a must-read. I loved this.
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Woodrow Wilson Smith, a.k.a Lazarus Long, the oldest man on Earth, a ‘Howard’ - a family of people long-lived by heriditary selective breeding, zooms into this tale and is a character that I’ll not forget soon. Heinlein’s story-telling is impressive as he manages to do so much - interwine a strong character-driven plot with science fiction - with so little talk. The pace of the story is fast - perhaps too fast - and it compresses seventy odd years of his life into extremely enlivening pages. This is not ‘hard’ scifi, so die-hard fans of the genre can look elsewhere, but Heinlein is impressive in the people that he creates. It’s astounding the amount of work that has gone into making Lazarus beleivable, and it’s even more impressive in this book’s sequel, Time Enough for Love. This book ends well, and although the second (and way better) book can be read separately, this serves as a very good launch-pad into this universe.
I liked this.
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
XFN is nice.
Things Meyer says, Matt expounds and Tantek elaborates about this.
Tags: development
Tuesday, December 16, 2003
When I was 15 or so, an editor of a local newspaper came to school, she wanted articles written for a teens’ supplement her paper was starting. I went to a meeting she called for, listened and spoke little and my invisible self studied her more than I studied her words. Then I was a little less rebellious than I am now, and the drab articles that she asked for gave me ungoverned useless artistic license. But as she was leaving, she stood and said, “And now you will submit this by?” - and as all such open ended questions, she met with no answer, whereupon she set an arbitrary date, and then she said a few words of which I’m thinking of now: “Nice. A deadline. A deadline helps you to perform better, don’t they?”
Since that was another open question, nobody spoke, people thought. I thought. And I’ve thought about that a lot. Deadlines don’t help me. Not at all. If someone comes to me and tells me, you’ve got to complete this project by such-and-such a date, my brain stops working unless I can convince myself that the project isn’t so important or that I like it. There is the dreary comforming bit of it all where one should always do as (or better than) one’s neighbours, in every aspect of my life. Deadlines make the thing most alive in me, dead - I always tend to put off everything that I have to do. If I have to have deadlines, I’d rather have them at the end of a month than at the beginning of another, I’d rather complete a piece and submit it on November 20th than on December 1st.
I suppose there are people who are helped by deadlines. I suppose, in some small way I too am helped by them, and I don’t notice it since I arrange my life so that most of my deadlines are flexible. If it were an absolutely rigid one, my short-term burst would take care of problems, but then I’ll vomit after the impetus. Deadlines and me don’t mix. I wonder what that says about me.
Tags: musings
Monday, December 15, 2003
When you write something for print, all the qualification that you do to it is within the text, you can add emphasis and punctuation to stress and tone your message, but essentially, everything is in the words. In Hypertext, it’s not so, there’s some stuff called Markup that you have to worry about. And it’s all so damn unintuitive and intrusive. If I have to write something that really cuts to the heart, something simple yet beautiful - something like poetry in prose, that develops an image in words, I simply can’t break it with markup. HTML Links interfere with a reader’s thoughts, they’re kinks in a long melodious chain of word upon word, rotten kinks that don’t fit in anywhere, and so I have to invent, contort, displace prose so that somehow it isn’t so terribly rotten on the eye and it all somehow fits in. But I never seem to be able to do that well, it’s said of this that it’s a hard thing to learn, and I’ll try and try again because as always if you catch the reader unaware, it’s said to be more effective.
Tags: development
Monday, December 15, 2003
It’s one of the words in the language which when I see I have to instantly know the meaning, and it’s also the name of one of my favorite romantic movies. Serendipity is an astutely amazing movie simply because the first time I saw it I expected so much from it simply because a director who chooses such a title simply must make a movie to deserve its magic. And it does. I don’t know how it’s about some movies and some people - I’ve never seen Russel Crowe so violently brilliant as in A Beautiful Mind, I’ve never seen a more seductive woman than Charlize Theron in The Devil’s Advocate, and in this movie Kate Beckinsale has that wickedly bewitching smile and eyes that I can’t watch without somebody taking a sledgehammer to my heart. And I’m so sorry to say that its only in this movie, I recently saw Underworld and I didn’t even recognize her in it. But this movie has magic like so few movies before and after it. I love it. You should too if you want to hang around here 
Relevant Kinks (spelling intentional): Kate | Charlize | Devil | Russel | Underworld | Beautiful Mind
Tags: chaff
Monday, December 15, 2003
Vysnu is now an X-Phile. Thanks to Evan Goer who manages the list and runs that site, he was extremely helpful in helping me make the grade.
For people who have difficulty satisfying the third criteria to make the list, which is: The MIME-Type Test (sends application/xhtml+xml to conforming user agents, i.e. Mozilla)
, I have a link from Evan to help you along:
Mark Pilgrim’s Article on XML.com.
Tags: vysnu.com
Monday, December 15, 2003
Marooned in Realtime is certainly a refreshing change from the other Scifi that I’ve read. Vinge provides a way to skirt around what he calls a Singularity, and the implications and reponses of people jumping across millenia in a time bubble only to return and find that the entire civilization has been abandoned. It’s not an enviable plot by any means, but Vinge makes gigantic issues seem smaller, and the whole story is told from the PoV of an old-fashioned detective, W.W. Brierson, who eventually manages to solve a mystery (though not the mystery that we want him to solve)
The fact that the greatest mystery of them all is still unresolved (how the world got abandoned) is overshadowed by a genuine resolution that the story brings about, quite astonishingly simple and satisfying in that respect. I liked this.
Sunday, December 14, 2003
I was reading Cordelia’s Honor today and since it was a volume that included Shards of Honor and Barrayar, there was not too much stuff to read <g> but I discovered an interesting snippet that Bujold says towards the end, something that I’ve noted before in A Clash of Kings. The passage is reproduced:
[..] I now had in hand a messy first draft of about a hundred pages of narrative, with no chapter breaks, that clearly wasn’t long enough to be a novel. I paused briefly, flirted with a really bad scenario about a convenient alien invasion that would force Barrayar and Beta to ally, decided “Why should I make things easy on my characters?”, and plunged on to the much better and more inherent idea of the Escobar invasion, thus accidentally discovering my first application of the rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask “So what’s the worst possible thing I can do to this guy?” And then do it [..]
It is interesting that authors use negative emotions to drive a positive result. There must be a word for this writing tool which rhymes with sadism, but I’m unable to find it now =) /Me is Adding this to another thing that he must explore. And soon.
For patient readers of Kharke, there is good news and bad. I’ve been thinking of rewriting the story in the vein of George R.R. Martin since it seems so exciting (and pointedly refreshing) to change narrators often, but come what may, I’ve made a promise to myself, Chapter 4 will hit Vysnu before the new year is out. I love you all =)
Tags: chaff
Sunday, December 14, 2003
Wordpress has updated its filenames to start with wp- a more stable (and I hope final) change. I’ll port my in-house hacks to a more stable version while I’m at it, and then look to writing some plugins. I hooked up a CVS client to look into its progress last week and I was pleasantly surprised: Readable URLs are a big plus, and various smaller tweaks which would make Wordpress much nicer to use. I hope the new version comes out soon.
Tags: development
Sunday, December 14, 2003
I’ve mentioned Taken before, and today it ended. Spielberg crafts a nice tale, but it is nothing really special. The ending was more than a bit anticlimatic and weepy. I liked lots of things about the series, but the last episode, which is incidentally titled ‘Taken’ is certainly not the best of the lot. What I liked about and learned from the series is the fact that so less graphics was weilded to tell the tale - much of the alien tales and scifi movies that I’ve seen employs computer animation to make it realistic. Spielberg employs that arm almost grudgingly, and that makes it nice, though I can’t say better or not. I liked this tale, but I’d hoped for a bigger end =)
More about Taken here. Those who missed it today should see it later, from one of the repeats.
Tags: chaff
Friday, December 12, 2003
Still reading, see my comments for book 1. This seems to continue in the same vein, with something that troubles me lurking inside it.
Edit: 12 December 2003 - Well I’ve finished this, and I’ve deduced an interesting fact about Martin and the way he writes. In any fantasy story, there should be a semblance of balance between good and evil - Martin is very harsh when it comes to destroying the hopes of the good, but the way he destroys evil is particularly cruel, he makes the reader see that there is some good even in a bad person and then when we start to empathize with them - whack! - a head goes off. I don’t like this kind of writing, but Martin keeps me holding on to the series in the hope that there will be an eventual (good) resolution.
Thursday, December 11, 2003
Memory is an enjoyable read that marks a turning point in the saga. Miles Vorkosigan, our lovable mutie, grows into the person that he really is. And it’s done so convincingly that we rarely even think that Admiral Naismith will forever be no more. I read this after the later books in the series, but I have to say that this is one of the best books ever - it doesn’t have the fast-paced action of the earlier books nor the romantic slower-paced drama of the later books, but it’s a classic all by it’s own. I love this.
Thursday, December 11, 2003
I like being alone. I’m immensely protective of my space - I’m not a touchy-feely person, and I usually reject outright offers to go out if I can get some time alone with my computer at home. I don’t lack friends but I neglect them like the worst person on earth. My closest friends don’t hear from me for weeks on end and when I have of one my mood-swings I dip into my shell like a forgotten oyster and they let me be. Only a few people I know can make me go out and enjoy it - in most groups I go out with, I’m the black sheep - the X factor <g>, the wacko, until of course something happens when they need me. I’m equally frightened and proud of my spontaneity, it makes me one of the best people to pick if something goes wrong and the worst person to be with if something doesn’t. I don’t make jokes, I laugh at the worst ones, and I don’t respond well to people teasing me. I also tend to be extremely jealous of silly things, and I have a barometer inside me that measures the performance of people around me constantly and which urges me to stay on top of everybody like a fake crown atop a fake king-of-the-world. I tolerate the crown at most times - sometimes (my worst moments) I succumb to it, but most times I fear it. I don’t have an iota of tolerance for ineptitude, but I’m the laziest person on earth. I’m inconsiderate and insensitive about people’s motives (never about their feelings), a few times blatantly so, and when I find something really interesting, I have a single-mindedness that astonishes me. I try to fit in with everybody, and I don’t fit in with anybody. Sometimes, I like myself enough so that some people like me.
I hate being alone. Sometimes, at night, I need a hug so badly my second pillow gets twisted to bits. Sometimes, my heart pings and twangs and throbs and no amount of unlearned oaths or twisting about will make them go away. And after all this, I sleep much more than I want to.
I want someone to talk to. I don’t think I’ve ever had many enemies. I’m tolerably friendly with everybody, and yet every single one of the Vishnu’s that those people consider a friend is only a fragment of me - some so tiny that I’m invisible, and only a few of them encompassing even a half of me. I’m…afraid that no one could ever know who I am. Even yesterday, I was struck by an article which describes extra-uterine births in The New Atlantis. I felt that the author hadn’t explored even a fragment of the subject matter. She hadn’t dwelled on the positive aspects of the technology and had hardly scratched the socio-economic repurcussions. I don’t even think she scratched anything of the ethical issue as well. So I was thinking about it a long time yesterday - I appended it to my list of non-fiction articles to write (The list includes things like ‘Objectvism in the earlier novels of Terry Goodkind’ and ‘A new look at the Reader-Response Theory’) and I made the mistake of broaching the subject at the dinner table. My brother and my mother looked at me like I was a space alien and my mother made me promise not to mention such disgusting things to her again. I looked at it from her pov to agree that it’s quite disgusting. I think, among my circle of people who are close enough to me, only one or two would actually take this as a dinner conversation, and only a few wouldn’t mock it. I don’t mind people mocking it so long as they give me reasons for it, but I think no one shall. This is hardly an illustrative example, but one of the many many things that I keep to myself.
And I vent at you. Now you do realize why you’re here don’t you?
Tags: chaff
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
I had a rule to not take any measuring tests online, but since Boris asked me to take one, I thought I’d try out a spate of tests just for the sake of completeness. Most of them are downright drowsy and predictable, a lot of them seem to exist just for the sake of boosting the test-takers ego =) I found Emode’s Ultimate IQ tests to be a good one though, I’d urge you to take it, since I stress-tested it for quite a long while using my mother and brother as dummies, it gives nice results 
My IQ is 133, and I’m like Bill Gates. I should say Yuck!
Tags: chaff
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Pray, define rape? As far as I understand it, it’s a violation of the human body, an act whereby another person takes something from you. Something that you value. It follows that if you don’t value your body, and you are willing to give yourself away, you can’t be raped. Please understand that I’m not saying that prostitutes or mentally insecure people can’t be raped, I’m saying that people who attach no value for this sexual act can’t be. When you are raped, you lose something of value inside you - your body, or a piece of you inside you that you are willing to share with only a few other people. If you don’t accord any importance to that part inside you, but instead consider it as something to share with everybody, however dross or crass or repulsive that person may be, then you can’t be raped. Perhaps the word ‘rape’ itself is a misnomer here, I use it in the frame of meaning of “an unwilling sexual act,” rape itself means much more, and incidentally, it’s a crime of anger, not attraction.
I hope this is a simple enough extrapolation of a simple idea: If you don’t value a thing, you shouldn’t worry about losing it.
Pray, why do we wear clothes? Aside from modesty and social conditioning, I’ll wager that we value our bodies enough so that we only reveal them to people we like and trust. People who we don’t like don’t get to see us (‘us’) simply because we don’t like them enough. Nudists bare all, always. If I was a nudist, then I would have to go naked even in front of people who I find positively repulsive. Leaving aside silly reasons like being naturists or going around in the way God made us, this makes me value my body not at all. I’d like to infer that nudists don’t mind anybody looking on them because they don’t accord importance to their nudity.
But of course, seeing is not touching. If we decide to accord the same laxity that that nudists have towards their bodies to sex, then rape will no longer be a crime. Because the way we refuse touch is say “No” - the way we refuse sight is to wear some clothes. I’d like to believe that every person will selectively like or dislike some people - every person will have a code of values by which he grades other people, and no man or woman, just by the sake of existing, has the right to someone else.
That’s why I don’t like Nudism.
Tags: musings
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
View the story at Harriet’s Place
‘The Seduction of Simone’ provided a welcome break from the other book that I’m reading (Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin), this is a light novella, written in a style both fluttery and vivid and one that I found pretty engaging. The story itself is pretty good, and the telling is nice as it is so clearly told by a woman. Scott diverges entirely from modern female writers (who tend to be sexless and hence boring (an exception to this is probably Love Again by Doris Lessing) and writes in a style which seems overly blithe at first but which quickly converges into a tempo that is fascinating. Margaret is a thirty-something woman, and she sees Simone, a pretty twenty year old in a bar one day and falls in love with her. Like I said, clich�. Except maybe for Margaret’s and Simone’s bisexuality, but that is glossed over in this story, and somehow that makes what happens between them more an act between people falling in love than an examination of a peculiar kind of love - this is most refreshing among online writers. I liked this. Another tinge of vivid color in this book is the Modern Britishness of it all - how Margaret frames her personality to suit the younger crowd that Simone hangs around with and how she describes Britan in a trip that she and Simone goes on. In fact, I think I’ll quote something:
Whatever you may have read about the London Eye, it is a truly spectacular sight, a marvel of our times. The overriding culture in Britain at the start of the millennium is one of laboured and unpleasant cynicism, a sour refusal to look at anything in a positive light, but the Wheel is a true triumph, an aesthetic delight, a cultural treasure and a shared experience which can unite a nation riven by self-made divisions. It is, simply, beautiful.
Simone and I stood on the steps beneath Westminster Bridge, looking over the Thames at its splendid steel frame, glinting proudly in the emerging sun, with the grandly functional County Hall forming a sober backdrop. It was so big. No matter how many times one hears how big it is, the first sighting is always a shock.
“It’s fantastic,” Simone said, unable to tear her eyes from it. “Stunning. I had no idea it would be that good.” She turned and looked at me, and for the first time her cool demeanour slipped and a look of unrestrained excitement invaded her features. [..]
Link to an eBook version of ‘The Seduction of Simone’
As an aside, this is the first time that I’m featuring online writing at Vysnu. Scott seems to be an apt author to feature since she provides a good median among the writers that I’ve read - readily flippant and serious, and an easy read to the eye. With no offense to Ms. Scott, there are better undiscovered writers out there, and I’ll feature some of them when I get to them.
Tuesday, December 9, 2003
Well, as promised, Vysnu has a new site style. I call this harmless green. It’s meant to be easy on the eyes, and it’s best that you switch to that before you read my writing. Harmless green isn’t complete yet, but one of the nice things about the style switcher is that I can explore my design itch in-situ; by the time it’s finished, harmless green would be a completely slick beast, just like tiny blue dot. Enjoy!
Pulled down for further repair.
Tags: vysnu.com
Monday, December 8, 2003
Just completed a minor redesign. Not a redesign as such, restructuring would be more precise. Things I did:
Tags: vysnu.com
Sunday, December 7, 2003
I’ve said this before, George R.R. Martin is a good author, but there is something about his work that troubles me. I’ve finished book 1 of his saga, “A Game of Thrones” and my thoughts on that are elsewhere, but there is something more to add. For people who don’t have a grasp of the plot, it’s a fantasy story, and he creates characters - honorable and not so, evil and not so, good and not so, loving and lustful and the whole plethora of drunken soldiers that every novel seems to have. And yet, and I say this reluctantly because I obviously haven’t scratched the surface of the saga, his characters seem to highlight the weak rather than the good. You see, I’m not a big fan of stories where the bad guy wins. Even where the bad guy wins for motivations which the bad guy thinks are good, is barely digestible. And here, I can’t even draw the line. Are the Starks heroes? Is Tyrion Lannister a nice guy? Who will Jon Stark become? And what’s the stuff about dragons?
Those are rhetorical questions, but my fear is that when the answers do come, it won’t be easy on my brain.
Tags: chaff
Sunday, December 7, 2003
In Kerala, unlike much of India, Deepavali is not the festival of lights - it’s a festival of sound; ear-busting crackers to be precise. Karthika is one festival that I completely enjoy because it has such a satisfying end. Fireworks during Diwali (which are burst to drive away evil spirits) lasts for a microsecond, and it causes more harm than good. During Karthika, keralites plant a row of lights all around their house. Earlier, in my younger days, we used small earthern pots filled with oil, and wicks that we twined from old cloth. For the past few years, we have used candles - my mother tells me they are cheaper and easier to light - but the effect is the same.
Light candles all around your house and just go and stare at it from outside. There is something about candle lights that electric illumination can’t match. Neon lights wink and smudge and twinkle to attract us to them; candles do much the same but they are as soft as neons are hard. It’s during these times that I really miss my camera. Otherwise, Shuttered Eye would’ve had a few more additions today.
Tags: chaff
Saturday, December 6, 2003
Saw The Pianist today, it’s a violently incredible movie, the pieces of composition mix and match together with the plot to achieve a surreal perfection that drilled into my brain. The acting is not acutely superb, I rather suspect it is my impressionable mind<g> since I’ve never seen the situation of Jews in the Holocaust portrayed so vividly before. The understated acting though rather adds to the tenor of the movie than takes anything away from it, the ache to survive in Szpilman (Adrien Brody) will spill over your thin glass screen, and the chords of his silent piano will forever vibrate just behind your ears.
Do yourself a favor and watch this, preferably in a theatre, or on DVD.
Tags: chaff
Friday, December 5, 2003
Well, my meglomaniac self had to do this some time or the other. The sooner, the drowsier… Presenting the Vysnu.com wallpaper:
Download the Vysnu.com wallpaper!
Tags: chaff
Friday, December 5, 2003
Expanding on Task-based UIs, I’ve added an article to Sig9 Forums: Task Oriented User Interfaces.
Tags: me outside
Friday, December 5, 2003
Expanding on Reading, my spotlight graces Sig9 today: eBooks: eccentricities of the digital word.
Tags: me outside
Friday, December 5, 2003
Curled up with a good book. Go there!
Much like Small Spiral Notebook, what attracted me first to this gem of a book-review site is it’s name. But aside from that, Curled up makes me want to hug everybody on earth. Its vast collection of fantasy reviews is just what I needed to round up the scifi itch that seems to be all around my body today. The site gets a zillion stars for presentation and layout, and another zillion for its witty informative pressureless reviews. Loved this.
Tags: chaff
Friday, December 5, 2003
There are a lot of unrecognized brilliant authors out there. A lot of them. The last time I cried when I finished reading a book, an online anonymous writer wrote that work. The first time it was She by Rider Haggard. That book made me dream for a year, and I was perhaps ten or eleven then. All around me, everyday, people are impressed, awed, aroused, electrified by books, movies, music, by people and the smatterings of brilliance around us, by a vague vision of perfectness. A very few people yearn to talk about it. Happily, I’m one of them. And I’d like to meet and talk to more.
The last work that made me cry? Email me.
Tags: chaff
Wednesday, December 3, 2003
Two times I wrote her
once she said she didn’t have the time
twice she said nothing
and once, even I played at
that game,
being silent, that is.
The last time I said anything
though
was a long
time ago
so when she smiled this time,
her eyes caught me
by
surprise
nah, didn’t, really.
Tags: chaff
Tuesday, December 2, 2003
Life I have to give you
my child,
A mistake it is to
bring you here,
Pure joy and a piece of God,
Umpteen acts of unlove,
But it is you who I love
and love,
Not your father
not that bastard,
I’ll bring you in
and you’ll bring joy,
When there’s no money
Tags: chaff
Monday, December 1, 2003
Liked it, but the huge plot makes me wonder who the good and the bad guys are and I’m hating this delineation. I have also some issues with the characters, and it’s not something that I can easily resolve. Reading Book 2 of the series will be hard but irresistible.
Monday, December 1, 2003
Komarr introduces a healthily enjoyable female character to the saga, and Ekaterin satisfies as well as arouses curiosity. I like this book.
Monday, December 1, 2003
Loved this article. I’ve been researching User-interfaces a little recently (this book helped me along), and it is certainly a wonderful subject to explore. In recent years, I’ve tilted more and more to web designing as my forte, and one of the major aspects of a web site, often overlooked is site navigation. A tasked-based approach seems to be the best way to go about it.
I’m going to do an overhaul to this site based on some ideas. It’s going to make navigation super-easy, links intuitive, markup self-explaining and style valid and compliant. And of course, accessible.
Big plans, big mouth, little (enough) time.
Tags: development
Monday, December 1, 2003
George R.R. Martin is a good author.
He uses split-narrative story-telling, one person in a chapter, another in the next. I’m going to explore this way of writing, I think it’ll suit my narrative.
Tags: chaff
Monday, December 1, 2003
December is on. In all the novels that I read, december rhymes with winter. It’s a snow-month, flakes of white ‘substances’ that are as exotic to me as marihuana, and as exciting. For me, december is colder. Dimmer, thinner, wispier than other months. And definitely less livelier. Everything seems to wind down after a long, lovely (ugly) year, and I catch my breath for a while, now and again to let in the last of a year that I enjoyed (wasted).
Have you seen rain? Not slight drizzly rain, not the boring drops that fall and then pitter away like boring drops of rain. Not that, like this one:
One day, it started raining, and for six months it didn’t stop…I’ve been to all kinds of rain in Vietnam, slow rain, hard rain, sleet rain, rain that came in sideways and sometimes, rain that seemed to come out of the ground itself. (A quote from Forrest Gump, reproduced from memory)
I’ve seen rain, though I haven’t seen snow: slow rain, hard rain, rain that comes in sideways, and sometimes, rain that seemed to come out of the ground itself. Once, when it was raining - really raining, not like the boring drops of decemberwinter - I went out on the terrace and soaked it all in (really). The next day, I got a huge cold and the beginnings of asthma, but I didn’t mind.
I think, in small ways like this, people are blessed in different ways. I can’t see snow, but I’ve been given rain as a substitute. And I think I love rain, and what it means and what it means for the snow around me.
Tags: musings
