2003-08-02: mdfrm 1.8
A new version of mdfrm
with some more fixes from Russell Steinthal to the -c output. I also added
a DIAGNOSTICS section to the manual, just on general principals. (Ideally,
I think every program should list its error messages and what they mean,
but it's hard to find time to always do that in practice.)
2003-08-04: spin 1.38
I seem to be making very regular releases these days.
I finally found time and motivation to track down the long-standing bug in
spin where paragraphs consisting entirely of inline macros or commands
wouldn't get properly wrapped in paragraph tags. spin now understands
block and inline context considerably better.
New version available from the
regular place.
2003-08-04: S/Ident 3.1
S/Ident needed a new release to include some additional requester library
support that we wanted to use in Webauth 3.2.0, and I took advantage of the
opportunity to clean up the documentation a bit. The new version includes
the ticket expiration time and the local portion of the principal in the
IDENT struct, and the man pages have been expanded and rewritten in POD.
I also cleaned up the S/Ident test server significantly and added a local
implementation of krb_life_to_time for systems that don't export that
function from the Kerberos libraries.
New version available on
the S/Ident page.
2003-08-07: WebAuth 3.2.0
Finally and at long last, we've released WebAuth 3.2.0. It now has support
for S/Ident in the weblogin server, so we will be getting back some measure
of single sign-on in our network again. There are also various bug fixes
that have come out of the new www.stanford.edu testing.
Downloads and release notes are on the WebAuth v3 pages.
This is what I've been working on for the past week or so, and
intermittantly for a lot of the summer. Now we have to do a weblogin
upgrade next week, and then the new www.stanford.edu build is released the
week after that, followed by a new webmail release after that.
2003-08-20: On Basilisk Station
Review: On Basilisk Station, by David Weber
I went into this book expecting it to be fluff, but given the good things
that I'd heard about it, I really hadn't expected it to be this
badly written. But it is. It's absolutely atrocious.
There are no actual characters in this book, not even the vaunted Honor
Harrington, just emotions and stereotypes given names, cardboard cutouts
who have no depth below their single defining characteristics. There is no
character development to speak of, just predictable resolution of a
ham-handed conflict that's telegraphed and painfully obvious. You know
exactly how the only real character conflict of the book is going to play
out from the moment it was introduced -- it's that cliched.
All of this is, even the painfully earnest writing style, is perhaps
forgiveable. The book is, after all, feel-good fluff. There's no attempt
to be a serious novel here, just light space opera. And I don't
necessarily need a lot of believable character development in my feel-good
fluff (although it's certainly nice). But there are more problems.
First, Honor Harrington is one of the most blatant Mary Sue characters I
think I've ever seen in a published novel. A Mary Sue character, for those
not familiar with the term, is most commonly seen in fanfiction, and is a
viewpoint character representing an idealized view of the author (except
generally female if the author is male), inserted into the starring role in
the universe. The character is invariably uber-competent, initially
misunderstood, provokes jealousy, doesn't play by the "rules," but
eventually accomplishes such wonderful feats by doing things the way that
they should have been done that everyone comes around to realizing
how amazing they are. This is Honor Harrington to a tee.
Second, the villains. I almost didn't make it past the introduction where
the villains are introduced. That the world is essentially the loyal
military of a monarchy battling the evil communist welfare state is perhaps
forgivable, if worthy of a few eyerolls. What isn't forgivable is that the
villains are unbelievably stupid, walking cliches, regularly engaging in
behavior that is completely incompatible with their supposed standing in
the galaxy.
Now, I've thoroughly enjoyed books that have some of these same flaws. The
Lensman series, for example. And once the book settles down into the
business of the good guys beating the bad guys silly, it manages to pull on
some feel-good emotional strings (although if I'd actually ever believed in
the villains as a credible threat -- or, for that matter, as credible
period -- the suspense and victory would have been much more effective).
But the Lensman series was fun, and didn't take itself seriously,
so you could just laugh at the absurdity of the dialog and go along for the
ride, seeing how the next set of weapons will top the last. On
Basilisk Station, on the other hand, tries to take itself far too
seriously for the quality of the writing, and as a result is simply bad.
If you really, really need some feel-good military SF fluff and don't mind
one-dimensional emotional point sources instead of characters, this book
isn't worthless. But if you can keep from being knocked right out of your
suspension of disbelief every ten pages or so, you're more forgiving than
I.
Rating: 3 out of 10
2003-08-20: Music haul
It had been too long since I'd made a large music order, so I put together
a nice, varied one.
The Alan Parsons Project -- Eye in the Sky
Alkaemy -- The Merlin Mystery
Blackmore's Night -- Fires at Midnight
Dire Straits -- Making Movies
The Goo Goo Dolls -- Dizzy Up the Girl
Jean Michel Jarre -- Chronologie
Billy Joel -- 52nd Street
Billy Joel -- The Nylon Curtain
Billy Joel -- Piano Man
Howard Jones -- One to One
John Cougar Mellencamp -- American Fool
John Cougar Mellencamp -- Scarecrow
I'd forgotten how good of an album The Nylon Curtain is, so I'm
currently enjoying that.
2003-08-23: Book haul
Here, belatedly, is the latest haul from
Powell's, filling in holes in my
collections as well as picking up books I've been meaning to read for a
while.
Iain M. Banks -- The Player of Games
David Brin -- Heaven's Reach
Jacqueline Carey -- Kushiel's Chosen
Laurell K. Hamilton -- A Caress of Twilight
Laurell K. Hamilton -- A Kiss of Shadows
Laurell K. Hamilton -- Nightseer
Barry Hughart -- Bridge of Birds
Ursula K. Le Guin -- The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin -- Tehanu
Ursula K. Le Guin -- The Tombs of Atuan
C.S. Lewis -- Out of the Silent Planet
C.S. Lewis -- Perelandra
C.S. Lewis -- That Hideous Strength
C.S. Lewis -- The Four Loves
George R. R. Martin -- A Game of Thrones
Walter M. Miller, Jr. -- A Canticle for Leibowitz
John Ney Rieber -- The Books of Magic: Bindings
John Ney Rieber -- The Books of Magic: Summonings
John Ney Rieber -- The Books of Magic: Transformations
Stanley Schmidt (ed.) -- Analog's Children of the Future
Jill Thompson -- Death: At Death's Door
The third Books of Magic collection is on backorder. I have the comics as
well, but I like having collections like that in graphic novel form.
I've almost completed my C.S. Lewis collection at this point; I just have a
few other non-fiction books of his that I'd like to have.
Analog's Children of the Future reprints "Emergence" by David R.
Palmer, which is one of the best short stories that I've read. It's also
been expanded into a novel, which I should hunt up at some point, but the
short story is magical and I've wanted to own it for a decade.
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