2005-09-01: Meta: Journal comments
I purged all the comment blacklist entries except for the stuff to catch
URLs and re-enabled HTML in comments. Hopefully just the URL block will be
sufficient to keep the spammers out. I'm currently rejecting over 100 spam
comments a day, which is just way more than I can deal with even on a
semi-automated basis without blocking up front, so something like this is
necessary until I can get a chance to upgrade to something with captcha
support.
I often wish that Movable Type were better at hosting discussions, but it
just isn't, and I just don't have much time to try to struggle with it
right now. I'm sorry. I feel bad about it, particularly when it catches
something from a friend and causes a huge hassle.
I'm hoping to get a chance to switch to WordPress in the near future, but
it requires figuring out how I'm going to back up MySQL, getting the
software installed and configured with reasonable templates, and making
sure that I can keep up with security updates. So basically four or five
hours of work, doable but hard to come by at a stretch at the moment.
2005-09-02: Who wins?
I'm not going to get deeply into this right now, since I really need to get
work done today and if I start posting links and comments, I'll never stop.
But this one comment I can't resist.
You can learn a lot about the real power structures of a country by
analyzing
who always makes money, even in a disaster. It's nothing about
conspiracies. It's nothing about fault or blame. It's an observation
about what having power means. Having power means being safe. It means
having the infrastructure with which to do contingency planning, the
connections to ensure that you have your inside track on whatever wealth
there is to be had out of a situation, the riches to be diversified and
able to recover from disasters that the people who don't have power cannot
easily recover from.
Many large corporations are being generous with the contributions during
this catastrophe, and the news media makes a lot of that. On one hand, I
don't underestimate the value of those contributions, and I'm quite certain
that the individual people working for those corporations are volunteering
out of the goodness of their hearts and in many cases are real heroes. On
the other hand, it's perfectly legitimate, while thanking them for that
contribution, to note the percentage of their free cash that those
donations actually represent.
In the long run, lots and lots of people in the Gulf Coast region are going
to face catastrophic damage to their finances, their lives, their families,
and their possessions. The major stockholders and senior management of
Wal-Mart won't. I'm not saying they should; ideally, no one should.
But this is the very definition of power versus powerlessness.
2005-09-02: Screening for TV
Just a quick reminder, something that everyone watching the news coverage
of Bush's visit to the disaster area should bear in mind:
There is nothing that Bush does that isn't set up in advance. Some of this
is simply necessary. It's part of being President. No one talks to him
without talking to the Secret Service first. But it's known, from Bush's
history with other areas, with how he handles other speeches and events,
and from the orders that the Secret Service gives to local officers, that
Bush's people screen everyone who appears with him for political beliefs as
well.
What this means is that everyone you see on TV having talked to him will
agree that he's compassionate, that he's taking control of the situation,
and that everything the White House says is true. This doesn't mean that
everyone believes this. This is simply because anyone who doesn't believe
that is screened out by the invisible people around Bush that you don't see
on the TV cameras.
One certainly can hold mixed feelings about what Bush truly thinks and how
he's truly reacting, how much of the smirk is a nervous tick versus a real
indication of his feelings, how much of his apparent tin ear to certain
aspects of the disaster (note, for instance, that he didn't approve of "the
response" not "our response") is just accidental. It's really hard to tell
what the truth is.
But there's absolutely no way that you'll see any of the unvarnished truth
on TV. Everything involving Bush on TV is staged.
2005-09-03: Choice of words
Other people are continuing to catch way more than I could, and
I don't have much to add to the reports I'm reading from my
LJ friends list among
other places. However, one little note that I've not yet seen covered
widely.
I'm not sure I really buy the argument against calling the survivors
refugees; apparently some people feel that carries a strong negative
connotation, but it doesn't for me. However, maybe we could avoid calling
handfuls of desperate or criminal people left in New Orleans insurgents,
hm?
Also, remember my post from yesterday, warning about believing what you
see and hear on Bush's tour? Well, one of the Louisiana senators is
saying publically that at least one of his photo ops was staged. Doesn't
surprise me a bit. The spin machine is gearing up. Watch out. And
watch how the smackdown is going to be levelled at any news media that
questions it. CNN is already falling back from asking hard questions into
a he-said, she-said reporting style.
2005-09-04: Tiny, interesting haul
My large book order is still waiting on The Algebraist to be
published in the US, but I got in a few other small orders.
Mary Gentle -- Ash: A Secret History
Ian McDonald -- River of Gods
Karl Schroeder -- Lady of Mazes
The Gentle and McDonald books I ordered from the UK via Amazon marketplace
(much cheaper than ordering directly from Amazon UK), since I wasn't having
any luck getting them through Powell's. Lady of Mazes I'm reading
next after I finally finish Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.
I'm thinking about placing another small order, picking up the essay and
review collections by John Clute and Gary K. Wolfe, but the latter appears
to be unavailable in the US, at least at the moment. I can't even find it
on Amazon UK.
2005-09-06: Asimov's, June 2005
Review: Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2005
Editor: Sheila Williams
Issue: Volume 29, No. 6
ISSN: 1065-2698
Pages: 144
This is the best single magazine issue I've read so far. It features solid
(or better) stories from several of the best short story authors SF has to
offer right now, a good book review column from Peter Heck, and an
interesting (if occasionally indulgent) essay from Cory Doctorow on
Kurzweil's way-out ideas. This is the first magazine issue I've read that
I think might be worth seeking out on its own.
"The Edge of Nowhere" by James Patrick Kelly: Where do people go
when they die? In this world, they go to a small town called Nowhere,
where all their needs are provided for and they can live on, doing whatever
it is that they want to do. This seems to be part of a larger world of
ideas, but anyone leaving the town is never heard from again. When agents
of the surrounding cognisphere come looking for a book that one of the
inhabitants is writing, this becomes a story about creativity, originality,
and taking risks. Charming, interesting, and thoughtful. (7)
"The Ice-Cream Man" by James Van Pelt: In a post-apocalyptic world
where the inhabitants are mostly supported by scavanging in the rubble of
the ruined civilization around them, a man continues to drive an ice-cream
truck, trading cones for goods and supplies. What starts as an almost
surrealistic setting concept becomes a fascinating twist on pied piper
legends and a defense of humanism against the fear of other. Good ending.
(8)
"Martyrs' Carnival" by Jay Lake: I wanted to like this story about
cult religious practices in a future colony on a desert world, but when the
utterly disagreeable religion ended up being right by authorial decree, I
lost interest. In the end, there were no characters I could side with.
(5)
"Bad Machine" by Kage Baker: What happens when you manage to break
all the failsafes on your companion AI as a child and let it grow along
with you? You end up with a pirate guardian angel who can do almost
anything for you in a heavily computer-controlled world. Add in some
uncanny powers of persuasion and you get confused adolescence crossed with
some creative computer protection and a difficult ending. Baker doesn't
take the ideas very far, but the characterization of the AI is a lot of
fun. (7)
"Rainmakers" by Ruth Nestvold: This story reminded me strongly of
Nicola Griffith's excellent
Ammonite. An outside negotiator
comes in to try to resolve a conflict with a native population on a colony
world and ends up going native, understanding their nature-driven world
view far more deeply than she expected. This isn't as good (or obviously
as deep) of a story as Ammonite, and the process of going native is
too abrupt and matter-of-fact, without enough justification in the rules of
the story. I needed more of a hook to get into the world, but still,
interesting. (6)
"The Little Goddess" by Ian McDonald: This is a fantastic story.
Set in the same world as McDonald's recent River of Gods (and really
wetting my apetite for that novel), it follows the life of a girl who is
chosen as the embodiment of the goddess Taleju. McDonald paints a vivid
picture of life as the Royal Kumari and of the faint connection to the
outside world through a banned network connection. He then follows her
through the loss of her status, into a quest for a husband as a normal
girl, and then into becoming an AI smuggler. The language is rich and
beautiful, the descriptions gorgeous, and the sense of place engrossing.
Add a beautiful ending and you get one of the best short stories I've read.
Highly recommended. (9)
Rating: 8 out of 10
2005-09-07: Life update
I was going to write another book review today (I'm three behind), but
between errands and visiting and finally getting some work done, I didn't
get to it. Bagthropes Abroad, So You Want to Be a Wizard,
and (finally) Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell coming as soon as I
get a chance. (I lost last weekend for productivity to a cold and being
doped up on Sudafed, so all I got done was reading.)
In other book news, I've started Lady of Mazes, and so far it looks
like Karl Schroeder has written another excellent hard SF novel. I'm also
reading another one of Langford's writing collections, which is excellent
as always.
Tomorrow and Friday, I'm going to really focus on catching up on e-mail,
Debian work, and work work, since I'm going on vacation again on Saturday
and kind of want to clear the decks before I do so. Not sure if I'll
finish more books before I leave, but I'm sure I'll do a fair bit of
reading while on vacation.
I'm not as focused on New Orleans any more, mostly because not as much is
happening. The polling results are disappointing; I really hoped that this
would break through the partisan political divide in this country, but it's
not clear to me that's going to happen. It's too frustrating to really
pour energy into, even if more
telling
stories keep turning up. This is why I keep feeling mostly alienated by
politics, that and the lack of political candidates that really represent
my beliefs.
Right now, I have a ton of different things going on at once, and really
need to do a lot of catching up. INN, News::Gateway, and Usenet politics
have definitely gotten the bottom of the barrel in terms of energy and time
lately, and I need to do some serious catching up on e-mail and replies.
2005-09-08: mvto 1.14
We've been using vos release -f to release AFS volumes since time
immemorial. This forces a full release and a full copy of the volume to
each replication site, and we started doing it originally to work around
some long-forgotten bug in Transarc AFS. The rest of the world doesn't do
this, and I tested omitting the -f successfully, so I've modified mvto to
stop passing the -f flag, allowing incremental releases. It makes
everything quite a bit faster.
I also fixed a bug in the handling of moving a RW site without an
accompanying replica when using the -s flag and cleaned up a few other
checks and limitations at the same time.
You can get the latest version from the
mvto
distribution page.
2005-09-09: One day to vacation
Well, no reviews today either. Ran out of time. However, the work inbox
is down to just five messages, I've taken care of the pending traffic in
various work team mailing lists, I have new OpenAFS Debian packages just
about ready to go, and I whittled down my personal inbox.
Only one day left to do catch-up before vacation, and some of that time has
to go to packing. Looks like I'm not going to manage to finish any more
books before vacation, so the ones currently in progress are going to have
to come with me.
Reservations to get to the airport are made, so I think the only thing left
that I have to do for the trip is pack, which should take me about an hour
and can be done tomorrow night.
2005-09-15: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Review: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Copyright: 2004
ISBN: 1-58234-416-7
Pages: 782
Magic has a grand tradition and sweeping impact on English history, leaving
behind not only extensive works of scholarship but political remnants,
including a Northern England that is still ruled in theory by John
Uskglass, the Raven King, even if he has been inexplicably absent for
hundreds of years. It is not, however, something that is still done. It
has politely passed out of the realm of gentleman and into the realm of
frauds and street con-men, due mostly to the inability of anyone to
properly perform it.
Anyone, that is, except for the reclusive Mr. Norrell, the foremost (and
least communicative) scholar of magic in the kingdom, who's primary
devotion is to the acquiring of every book about magic available so that
they will not be misused by lesser lights with inferior understandings.
Mr. Norrell may sound like a shadowy and mysterious power; instead, he is
more the petty schoolmaster and irascible museum curator who does not want
anyone looking at his displays unless they have exactly the correct
attitude. He has taught himself to perform magic through his extensive
research, but is extremely careful in how he performs it. There are, after
all, proper ways to do these things.
Norrell, despite his ability to dispense with the community of purely
theoretical magicians, simply does not have the personality to attract
attention at court and pursue his grand plan of reviving English magic.
Not, that is, until he attracts the attention of all of London in one
stroke by resurrecting the wife of a prominant nobleman. The dark and
extremely secret bargain that he strikes with fairy to do this, a type of
magic that he decries even more vehemently from that point onward, forms
the core of the eventual main plot that does develop, but not until much
later.
Enter, at this juncture, Jonathan Strange, a forthright and charming fellow
who is Norrell's opposite in personality but not in interest. When he
acquires his own magic, the only working magic in the kingdom independent
of Norrell's, he eventually seeks out Norrell to get access to the library
that he holds exclusively. In a surprising and then very insightful turn,
Norrell, breaking suddenly from his previous behavior, welcomes Strange as
a pupil. Finally, someone to talk to intelligently, and someone who can
help revive the practice of English magic properly!
And so it goes. That summarizes but the first few hundred pages of
Clarke's sprawling debut novel, a monumental, detailed achievement full of
small events that are never rushed. It is at times a comedy of manners
with magic, and at other times a pre-Victorian fantasy of the intrusion of
fey lands and fey concerns, no less threatening for being frequently
understated and subtle. Clarke succeeds admirably in her intended
construction, and whether that results in delight or frustration depends on
one's personal tastes, mood, and perhaps the angle of the light by which
one reads it.
Strange & Norrell, perhaps most infuriatingly, steadfastly
refuses to go anywhere quickly. This story is about texture more than
plot, and the portrait of the world is lovingly uncovered brushstroke by
brushstroke, enhanced with various jaunts, adventures, side stories, and
interesting scenes that bear only a passing relationship to any primary
storyline. There is a villain, imperiled innocents, a plot against the
country and king, even a climatic magical battle, but if you're reliant on
such things to keep up your interest in a book, this one will be a long
slog. The text, but for some ellipticism and a few carefully chosen
archaic spellings, is easily readable, but there are nearly 800 pages of it
and most of that attention is not lavished on plot. When I was in the mood
for it, I loved taking a slow stroll through the world; when I wasn't, I
was wishing that Clarke would get on with it already.
Where this book shines, however, is in the convincing portrayal of history.
This is in some respects an alternative history, the story of another
world in which magic plays a formative role in England, but delightfully it
avoids any extended recitation of alternative events. In fact, the details
of history are sparse and conveyed incidentally, leaving sufficient room
for the reader's imagination and sense of wonder to add any necessary
details. Instead, the sense of depth is derived from the entirely
fictional history of magic.
Both main characters are, above all else, scholars of magic. They
frequently cite their predecessors, debate the merits of different
interpretations and positions, analyze the truth of dubious records, and
argue over the safety of lines of inquiry and experimentation. In short,
they act far more like real scholars than any of the scholarly mages that
fill fantasy novels. Combine this with the fiction that this novel is
itself a scholarly work of magic history written some decades later, giving
rise to the frequent, amusing, and excellently-written footnotes that
expand on these frequent debates, and you have history construction through
core sampling. The richness and depth of the entirely fictional history of
magic infuses all of Clarke's world, giving it a sense of reality and
grounding far beyond that of more exhaustive constructions. This could be
dry and boring if done poorly, but it is not. Slow, yes, but even the
apocryphal stories related in footnotes are suffused with a dry and
extremely English sense of wonder.
Neil Gaiman has famously described Strange & Norrell as "the
finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years."
I join other reviewers in noting that by English Gaiman almost certainly
does not mean "written by someone from England," but rather is attempting
to capture the inherent Englishness of the story. Despite adventures in
France, Italy, and elsewhere on the continent, this is a story about
English magic, English scholarship, English history, English concerns. It
deservedly won a Mythopoetic Award and evokes mental images of the
Inklings' scholarship as much as their fiction. Oxford dons, pipe smoke,
and uniquely British mythology are well-served.
Pacing is one of the most difficult aspects of fiction writing to get
right, and normally for a first novel I would be noting a few standard
failures that will hopefully improve in later attempts. Here, though, that
would not be quite honest; while I found the pacing at times glacial, I
believe this was fully intentional rather than a failure of craft. With
the exception of the somewhat irrelevant Italian adventures that slow,
perhaps unnecessarily, the final burst of action, Clarke's refusal to allow
the plot a running start seems a calculated effect. Others clearly adored
this; I was less impressed, but will still praise the evident skill.
If I wasn't as enamoured of the pace, or of the strangely unsatisfying
ending that failed to provide much emotional release (but left room for
subsequent volumes to be appended), I can only praise the characterization.
Mr. Norrell is a wonderfully complex character whom one slowly warms to
despite a myriad of repeatedly demonstrated flaws, and Strange, despite
starting neatly in the mold of brave and likable hero, manages to escape it
and become as isolated in his own way as Norrell is by personality. Their
connection evolves believably through the story and is one of the better
portrayals of deep friendship between academic rivals that I've read. All
of those pages aren't wasted; Clarke's brushstrokes are not purely
ornamental.
I recommend trying this book to anyone who reads fantasy, in the full
knowledge that some portion will fall in love and some portion will put it
aside in boredom. It is very much not to everyone's taste, and in fact is
somewhat not to mine, but it is still a notable achievement. Give it a
try, but perhaps via a library or a friend; you may not want to commit
until you see how well the first few hundred pages draw you in.
Rating: 8 out of 10
2005-09-16: Vacation haul
I did do a bit of used book store shopping earlier this week, but hadn't
taken the time to write down what I'd gotten. It's a rather esoteric set,
in part because I didn't bother to bring my list:
Poul Anderson -- Flandry of Terra (sff)
Jack L. Chalker -- Riders of the Winds (sff)
Jack L. Chalker -- Midnight at the Well of Souls (sff)
Jack L. Chalker -- War of the Maelstrom (sff)
Christopher Hinz -- Liege-Killer (sff)
Gregory Maguire -- Wicked (sff)
Michael Moorcock -- Gloriana (sff)
Clifford D. Simak -- Project Pope (sff)
All the Chalker is because Midnight at the Well of Souls was the one
I've had recommended to me as pretty good, but I'd already picked up the
first of the Changewinds series and want more of it if I'm going to read
through it.
The Hinz and Simak books both came up in a panel at Baycon about forgotten
SF, so I figured I'd give them a shot.
Also, my big Powell's order finally shipped, so shortly after I get back
home I should get a large influx of new books.
2005-09-21: NNTP standards status
I'm rather behind on posting to my journal, and didn't get started early
enough today to update everything, but I have time for a quick note at
least. We've resolved the last holdup for the NNTP TLS draft, which means
that we've now dealt with all of the IESG concerns for the four NNTP
working group drafts.
The only remaining issue is whether to do anything about the 32-bit article
number limitation. I'm of the opinion that it's too late to revisit this
topic, but several working group members disagree and I'm not sure of the
consensus yet. Other than that, though, we're pretty much done. Time to
take a break from standards work and shift to programming work, something
that I've been very lax in when it comes to NNTP.
2005-09-22: Debian status
New package for the little Stat::lsMode Perl module uploaded and sitting in
NEW (thanks, Ben!). OpenAFS 1.4rc4-1 packages also finished, but I don't
think the upload worked for some reason. Will have to check on that.
Sam is currently reviewing the Kerberos 1.4.2-1 packages. May need to
track down some thread safety issues with the com_err library in e2fsprogs
that MIT Kerberos has historically built against in Debian.
I did some bug work with openssh-krb5 today, but it's still unclear whether
the reported security issue is really worth another upload. If there is
another upload, it will be the last one for the package; after that, people
should just use the current openssh packages. They now include Kerberos
support. (Speaking of which, I have to install them and make sure they
work for me.)
Other than that, I spent today moving things into Subversion. Hopefully
new sident and webauth packages tomorrow.
Oh, and the mpich + hdf5 + lam migration that I'm watching as part of my
new maintainer application seems to be progressing, but I need to go spend
some time hunting down its current status and post an update. A new lam
got uploaded today that will hopefully fix the build issue on m68k, so
there is that.
2005-09-23: Latest haul
Various book orders from both the US and the UK have all finally arrived
and I've collected them all in one place. So many things that I all want
to read right now! Here's the full list:
Catherine Asaro -- Schism (sff)
Iain M. Banks -- The Algebraist (sff)
Charlotte Bronte -- Jane Eyre (classic)
John Clute -- Strokes (nf)
Julie E. Czerneda -- In the Company of Others (sff)
Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling (ed.) -- The Faery Reel
(sff)
Neil Gaiman & Gene Wolfe -- A Walking Tour of the
Shambles (nf)
Mary Gentle -- Ash (sff)
Joe Haldeman -- Camouflage (sff)
Elizabeth Hand -- Mortal Love (sff)
David Langford -- The SEX Column (nf)
Ursula K. Le Guin -- Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching (nf)
Ian McDonald -- River of Gods (sff)
China Miéville -- Iron Sunrise (sff)
Teresa Nielsen Hayden -- Making Book (nf)
Matt Ruff -- A Romance of Souls (sff)
Geoff Ryman -- The Child Garden (sff)
Dan Simmons -- Olympos (sff)
Johanna Sinisalo -- Troll (sff)
Charles Stross -- Accelerando (sff)
Charles Stross -- Iron Sunrise (sff)
Gary K. Wolfe -- Soundings (nf)
Want to just read and read and read. But I'm being very good and finishing
other things first before diving into all my wonderful new stuff. I'm
trying to convince myself to alternate between exciting newly purchased
books and either Hugo winners or books that others have loaned me.
Currently reading: A People's History of the United States by Howard
Zinn, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein.
2005-09-25: The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
Review: The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, by Diana Wynne Jones
Publisher: DAW
Copyright: 1996
ISBN: 0-88677-832-8
Pages: 302
Still mentioned regularly by the author blogs and book review sites that I
read, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is a skewering of the overused
tropes and cliches of fantasy novels (particularly the ubiquitous fantasy
trilogy) written as a travel guide. The basic conceit is that the reader
is travelling to Fantasyland to take a Tour, one which normally comes in
three separate travel brochures. This guide tries to explain the local
customs, give the tourist an idea of what to expect, and reassure them that
being captured by slavers is not as bad as it sounds at the time.
I'll note my biggest dislike first. Except for a very short prefix (and a
map that's worth a few smiles, even if it doesn't feature suspiciously
square mountain ranges), the whole book is organized alphabetically. This
is a disappointing choice.
Except for reference works where the user (not reader) already knows what
they're looking up, alphabetical organization is nearly the worst possible
choice. It's a failure of imagination, providing no effective structure
and guaranteeing random and sometimes jarring transitions when read cover
to cover. I have the feeling that it may be part of the spoof, but this
sort of book is not a reference work even if it's pretending to be one, and
reading it like a reference work isn't as fun. While there are a very
small handful of expected jokes one can get out of this structure (I admit
I chuckled at "Eternal Quest: See Quest, Eternal"), I would have enjoyed
this book much more with a thematic structure. Chapters on clothing, quest
structure, places, inhabitants, and so forth would have flowed more
smoothly and would have eliminated the need for repeated cross-references
and alternate listings that were essentially wasted words (and would have
provided editing opportunities to trim out some of the duplicated
material).
That significant complaint aside, The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is
a lot of fun. From the bandit spy who is a mandatory employee in any trade
caravan to being captured and sold as a galley slave as the way to get to
the dragons and/or the Other Continent (for male tourists; female tourists
have other routes), I was frequently snickering or laughing out-loud at the
entries. Each is short and succinct, not wearing out the joke, and the
whole guide fits together in a satisfying way. For a parody encyclopedia,
Jones manages to do a surprising amount of consistent world-building,
creating an amusing mental image of this imaginary set of Tours. This is a
great book to pick up and read a page or two between other things.
Perhaps the best idea in this guide are the OMTs, or Official Management
Terms, which are the management-approved ways of referring to certain
features of the world. Ambushes happen in rocky defiles, the
ever-present stew that everyone lives on is thick and savory, and
squalor is invariably noisome. There are even better ones
sprinkled throughout the book, and it was amusing (and somewhat depressing)
how often the OMT listed for a particular item was exactly what my mind had
been anticipating automatically.
If you've spent any time reading traditional episodic fantasy series
(Robert Jordan, Mercedes Lackey, David Eddings, any of the role-playing
tie-in novels), you'll recognize quite a bit here. Jones does err in the
side of being funny rather than accurate, so many of the generalizations
stated baldly here don't actually apply universally, but that is a
completely forgivable sin. And enough hits accurately that I bet you'll
come away noticing more of those ubiquitous OMTs and wondering just why it
is that no one wears socks.
This isn't the sort of book that one reads straight through (particularly
given the alphabetic organization), but it's great bathroom reading. I
also recommend it as a book to stick into your pack for quick reading in
idle moments. I think it could have been better, and in some ways the
execution isn't quite up to the idea, but still mildly recommended for any
fantasy reader who enjoys poking some fun at their favorite books.
Rating: 7 out of 10
2005-09-26: Locus awards page split
Well, I was going to write a review this evening, but time ran away from me
too quickly. I did find a few moments to split my Locus awards pages apart
into SF and
fantasy
pages, though, as I'd been meaning to for quite a while. I've read way
more of the SF ones than the fantasy ones, I see.
Currently reading: A People's History of the United States by Howard
Zinn, Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan, Stamping Butterflies
by Jon Courtenay Grimwood.
2005-09-27: NNTP status
The IESG has approved the TLS and AUTHINFO extension drafts, which means
that all four of our drafts have now been approved and are in the RFC
Editor queue.
This means that, at long last, the work of the IETF NNTP working group is
basically done. We're talking about whether to stick around to do a few
more things, but I'm personally leaning towards disbanding the group, going
away to do some implementation and gather information, and then come back
after a year or so to see what still needs to be done.
All posts