Sometimes it really surprises me how much my enjoyment of a book is linked to my current headspace. For example, I read The Magicians a year or so ago and I recall really liking it. But this time around, I hated it. Well in truth the book was ok; what really I hated the main character. This read around he just totally rubbed me the wrong way. ¹ Then there was Blood and Honey. I don’t know for sure that it’s something that would normally be to my taste; but when I read it, I was in something of an angry mood ² Or we could look at the Dresden Files which over all has been a great source of entertainment of late; unfortunately too a great source, as it’s been keeping me waaaaay too late into the morning as I read each volume. ³

Other Notes

• I hadn’t realized how much a pair of worn out shoes were affecting my general feeling of well being. At least, I hadn’t until I finally bought some new ones. Good lord, I totally should have bought new shoes sooner.
• Speaking of things I should have done sooner, I went in to the doctor’s office today and got some antibiotics for the sinus infection that’s been wiping the floor with my system.
• I’ve been working on the new theme for this site, and I’ve got a rough prototype worked out for the home page. But I just don’t like it much. It’s not god awful, but it’s also not good enough. So I’ll probably be ditching the current redesign I was thinking about and try another approach.

Books, Headspaces & Other Notes © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

It was also the year I set a goal of reading 150 books and according to GoodReads I exceeded it by a good margin ⁴. 2011 was a time of much DIY madness and more than a little stress.

Unfortunately 2012 so far doesn’t look to be letting up with the stress, though we’ll see how that goes as the year goes on. One thing that really didn’t help with the stress was getting all butterfingered on Christmas day. Of course that incident is part of the reason that I decided to not continue with a second year of Project365. Still I don’t want to give up photography entirely, so this year it’ll be Project52 ⁵.

So Long 2011, Howdy There 2012 © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

I have been using a plugin to automatically post a summary of my weekly tweets, but that plugin stopped posting a while back for no reason that I can determine. *sigh* So in place of that automated posting and because I find I actually have a few semi-random things to say, today I give you my random and assorted musings.

A good friend of this site has recently become an officially published author (with a book and everything *grin*). Congrats Cath!

Humans are remarkably adaptable creatures. Yesterday, I noticed the house felt cold. I checked the thermostat and found the air temp and dropped to 62° (even though the heat was on and set to 68°). I dug out my copy of Home Improvement 1–2-3 and tried to diagnose the problem. I learned several things that weren’t the problem, but found nothing I could do to correct the situation. Today I’ve been working from home all day and got used to the cooler temperature without realizing it. At least without realizing it until after I had: an expert come out, tell me the furnace’s ignition coil was bad, replace it, charge me a $185 and leave. Then I noticed I was used to the cooler temperature, because all of a sudden it felt very warm to me.

After five years of married life, my wife has yet to completely around the bend and kill me. Go Michelle! ^_^ As an anniversary present from her to me, I received a ticket to Red Green’s One Man show when it hit Des Moines last weekend. Even better since she bought the ticket during IPTV’s Festival¹, my show ticket came with a ticket allowing me to get a bit of face time with good ol’ Red at a meet-and-greet after the show. The whole evening was, to quote another attendee, “a scream”. Even better during the meet-and-greet, I got my copy of Duct Tape Is Not Enough signed!

As for my present to Michelle, I got her exactly what she asked for: a Wii Fit Plus. We’d been interested in it for a while but then got to try it out at a friend’s place and we were rather hooked. It is a rather interesting way of getting/staying active. I especially like the logging/graphing functions in it, so I can easily see how much I’m improving (or not improving as the case may be). Though I do wish it would write notes to the Wii’s messaging system like Wii Sports does. *shrug* Oh well.

¹ Technically, some friends bought the tickets and she paid them back for the cost of my ticket. Yeah Cath & Bryon! ^_^

Random & Assorted Musings © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Update: Forgot to mention I was also participating in DrawMo, which is like NaNoWrMo but for artists. Well, I was sort of participating. In that I tried to draw something new every day but didn’t quite make it every day (but I did catch up on later days) and I’ve yet to scan/post my sketches for it. *shrug* Oh well.

¹ Highly recommend both the soundtrack and the DVD, 5 stars, 2 thumbs up, etc, etc…

I’ve Been Up To… © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

I looked at the code Rob used and with a little help from the Practical PHP I hacked together my own function based on Rob’s. By default print_reader2 works the exactly the same as print_reader¹ but by feeding it an additional parameter, you get your choice of what to use to display as reader’s name:

• 0: Prints out the user_login aka the username you use to log into WordPress.
• 1: Prints user_nicename, appears to simply be an all lower case version of the user’s nickname².
• 2: Prints display_name, from the “Display name publicly as” field in your WordPress profile.
• 3: Prints first_name, from the “First name” field in your WordPress profile.
• 4: Prints nickname, from the “Nickname” field in your WordPress profile.

function print_reader2( $echo=true, $reader_id = 0, $display = 0 ) {
	global $userdata;

	$username='';

	switch($display) {
		case "1": if (!$reader_id) { get_currentuserinfo(); $username = $userdata->user_nicename; } else { $user_info = get_userdata($reader_id); $username = $user_info->user_nicename; }; break;
		case "2": if (!$reader_id) { get_currentuserinfo(); $username = $userdata->display_name; } else { $user_info = get_userdata($reader_id); $username = $user_info->display_name; }; break;
		case "3": if (!$reader_id) { get_currentuserinfo(); $username = $userdata->first_name; } else { $user_info = get_userdata($reader_id); $username = $user_info->first_name; }; break;
		case "4": if (!$reader_id) { get_currentuserinfo(); $username = $userdata->nickname; } else { $user_info = get_userdata($reader_id); $username = $user_info->nickname; }; break;
		default: if (!$reader_id) { get_currentuserinfo(); $username = $userdata->user_login; } else { $user_info = get_userdata($reader_id); $username = $user_info->user_login;};
   }
	if ($echo)
		echo $username;
	return $username;
}

Side note: WordPress 2.5.1 got released today and it includes a security fix, be sure to update your blogs!

¹ At least, I think it does. I’m not a programmer and I only know enough PHP to be dangerous to myself.
² The WordPress Codex does not appear to define what this field is used for or why it exists, so that’s just my guess.

Now-Reading Tweaks © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Reading List © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

So I am looking forward to seeing this and hopefully it won’t suck like the trailer.

¹ Over Sea, Under Stone, The Dark is Rising, Greenwitch, The Grey King and Silver on a Tree
² I’d give you a direct link to the trailer, but they built their site entirely in flash so there’s no way for me to do so. Apple now has the trailer for The Dark is Rising on their movie trailers page.
³ The main character of the book.

The Dark Is Rising © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

Tonight, John Scalzi made a stop at the Prairie Lights bookstore in Iowa City, IA for his book tour to promote The Last Colony. Michelle & I got there wicked early¹ and chatted with a couple of store employees briefly. Fortunately, they were cool with me bringing in my own copy of The Android’s Dream to get it signed. *whew*

Then while we were looking around the shelves near the area for the reading, they said we could go ahead and purchase a copy of The Last Colony while we were waiting so we wouldn’t have to wait in line later. Schweet. Then I noticed they had copies of The Sagan Diary. I was most pleased by this as I was a bit strapped for cash when the pre-orders were announced for it on Mr. Scalzi’s blog and I’d heard the complete print run had sold out. Naturally, I grabbed one of the 3 copies they had left. :D Then we went into the coffee shop³ and grabbed a drink. I had their cafe mocha, while Michelle had a brewed butterscotch toffee coffee, which she promptly ruined by using soy milk for a creamer and adding sugar to it. Then we went back over to the reading area and found Mr. Scalzi had arrived. He was chatting with the few members of the audience⁴ and with the various members of the staff.
As Mr. Scalzi’s visit happened to be part of the Live from Prairie Lights. This is a local radio program that is recorded live and then later played back on a local radio station, as well as the UofI’s school/public access TV channel. So he also spent some time talking to the host of the program prepping for the show.

Then just before the show began, he addressed the audience letting us know he’d start off by reading the first chapter of The Last Colony, go into a Q&A session and then he’d be happy to pose for photos. Naturally, that’s when I decided to snap a quick shot. Heh. I also took a couple of photos later, but they weren’t as amusing as this one so they’ll remain offline for now. The reading and Q&A were quite fun to listen to. Not being a writer, I didn’t join in and ask any questions (plus my caffeine buzz was wearing off). After the recording was over, Mr. Scalzi kindly offered to sign any books people had. I quickly stepped into line with my brand-new copy of The Last Colony — specifically purchased at Prairie Lights this very evening to support them, since they brought Mr. Scalzi in for us — and my slightly dog-earred copy of The Android’s Dream.

Side note: Yes, I realize this entry is rather disjumbled. This is partly explained by me having a caffeine-crash headache, partly by me staying up till 1AMish to write it and partly by me just not being a writer.
Side note 2: The quickie post following this will explain part of why the heck I’m still up writing this.

¹ Mostly due to somebody’s lead foot².
² Said lead foot was not a Men’s size 13.
³ In his opinion on coffee, Mr. Scalzi is quite wrong. Coffee (especially good coffee) does not taste like ass.
⁴ Around this time, Michelle mentioned to him The Android’s Dream was her favorite book and he said it was his as well.

Squeeee! © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

The Android’s Dream by John Scalzi
My Rating: 5 out of 5.

This book is a delightfully wacky tale of one man’s fight to keep a very special sheep alive. In the process, our hero will have to fight off various aliens and a few treacherous villainous humans. Scattered throughout The Android’s Dream are numerous one liners. Each one of these taken by itself and outside the context of the story are funny, but put together and in context they’re hysterical. LOL is a common abbreviation used online that stands for “Laugh Out Loud”. These days it is mostly used to indicate somebody found something else amusing and does not actually mean any truly laughed outside of their own head. I bring this up as I repeatedly found myself laughing out loud while reading The Android’s Dream. Below are a few of my favorite lines from the book:

Jesus, forgive me, he thought. I really shouldn’t have eaten that panda.

“No more shoes in advance for anyone,” he said.

“Today people have tried to kill me, the police are looking for me, and I’ve just discovered every Easter of my childhood, I ate one of my relatives with mint jelly. I’m just fine.”

“I don’t know … You’d have to ask the sheep.”

It drives physicists mad and every few years on e will snap and begin raving that sentient beings should nae fuck with that which they ken nae unnderstan’

If my little review here fails to entirely convince you to rush out and find a copy of this book to read, then try Bookgasm’s review

Review: The Android’s Dream © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien*
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein*
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children Of The Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card*
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson* This is really three books that they’ve lumped altogether and I don’t see any combined version for sale on Amazon. The individual books are: Lord Foul’s Bane (Book 1), The Illearth War (Book 2) and The Power That Preserves (Book 3).
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams*
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview With The Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash., Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein*
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

50 most significant sci-fi/fantasy novels © Mark McKibben, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States.