Stuff about me (Bernard HP Gilroy), instead of or in addition to stuff about education.
This is just a list of things I’ve managed to get published in the Hun Review, my school’s literary annual:
Being a geek of a certain age, I of course went out to see Tron: Legacy as soon as it opened in the theaters. And being a geek of a certain type, and having listened to Wendy Carlos‘ ethereal soundtrack to the original Tron, I also purchased the soundtrack to this one as soon as it was available. This was my first introduction to Daft Punk, whom (I must admit) I first even heard of when their role was announced to much rejoicing. On receipt of the CD (yes, I still buy physical goods from time to time), I learned that they had worked on the orchestration with Hans Zimmer, a composer whose other cinematic work I do know and enjoy.
I say all this to make clear that I cannot evaluate the album as to its “Daft Punkness”. On my first listen through, I was underwhelmed. Wendy Carlos notwithstanding, I am not much of a fan of techno, and this album is certainly that. But having spent the cash I gave it a few good listens, and then I noticed that I was replaying the music in my head throughout the day. That’s just about the best recommendation you can give an album: it’s something you want to keep listening to. It evokes the movie (which I very much enjoyed) without being dogmatically tied to it. I’ve played these tracks for more than anything I’ve purchased in the past year or so.
(more…)Last night, Annie and I attended a show by Marc Cohn with Suzanna Vega at the Town Hall NYC.
Playlist
We stayed for most of Suzanne Vega’s act. I don’t really know Ms. Vega’s work so I didn’t capture an accurate playlist and I can’t really comment on her performance. I was reminded that for me (and I’ll apologize to any Vega fans out there), I like her songs on occasion but couldn’t really listen to a whole album of them.
Marc Cohn’s portion of the show was everything I’d hoped for, though. (It was a little short for him, but that’s the result of the double-billing.) I was a bit taken aback by the realization that this month marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Marc Cohn, his debut. He’s probably getting a little tired of reciting the story about Muriel at the Hollywood. 🙂 His band was excellent, including as always the amazing Shane Fontayne on guitar. I found the playlist interesting, as there were some rarer bits (“My Santuary”, for example) and some missing favorites (such as my personal one, “Dig Down Deep”). He played surprisingly few from what he jokingly calls his “Greatest Hits album, released first”.
He did two from Listening Booth: 1970. While I like the album well enough, I am less excited to hear other people’s songs than Cohn’s. But he put a really nice spin on “Into the Mystic”.
It’s been too long since I’d been to a Marc Cohn show — this past summer, it seemed like he would play a city only after I’d left it 🙂 — and it was a nice refresher.
So, last Saturday (Sep 11), a paper in Maine ran a story about the local celebrations at the end of Ramadan the day before. It was a pretty innocuous piece, a typical fluff article about local culture.
Then the Internet happened.
(more…)Just to put it in one place, here’s what I’ve read and what I hope to read this summer.
Already Read
On the agenda
From a post by Steve Benen over at Political Animal:
In human history, it’s never been easier to get — and stay — well informed. Folks just have to take some responsibility. If they don’t, the result can be a dysfunctional democracy.
It’s impolitic to say this but not all pastimes and passions are equal. And the next time you bemoan the state of the economy or your due taxes or your summons to jury duty or the latest idiocy out of Washington — just pause for a moment and think about how much time you spend reading gossip columns, or devouring “reality” TV, or watching one overgrown overdosed tribe of jocks beat up on a different overgrown overdosed tribe of jocks. Is it really true that you don’t have the time to keep informed? Or is it that you just don’t want to invest that time?
And if it’s the latter, do you really deserve the vote you’re accorded by virtue of your citizenship in an advanced democracy?
Inception
a Christopher Nolan Film
Arbitrary 5-Point rating: 5 out of 5
Inception is a weird, ambitious, action-packed sci fi thriller-cum-heist flick. It is, in its own way, as ambitious as The Matrix and suffers from the comparison only in that it didn’t come first. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Tom Dom Cobb, a thief of a singular kind: He can enter the dreams of others and “extract” information they’re trying to keep secret. On the run for (at first) unspecified horrible crimes, he parlays his skill into a lucrative, if high-risk, lifestyle. But in the end all he really wants to do is get to go home again and pick up the shards of his former life, including two small children.
More detail, and spoilers, to follow, but in short, this is a fantastic film that’s better than it has any right to be. The pacing is superb, the acting is above-average, and the setting and technology are remarkably well fleshed out. Although everyone draws comparisons to The Matrix, the real spiritual ancestor of this film is The Thirteenth Floor (which, ironically, came out at the same time as — and got lost in the glare of the hoopla of — The Matrix).
Spoilers ho!
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I’ve received my new laptop and am working on getting it outfitted and up to speed. (This process, by the way, is distressingly like moving to a new home and is equally as frustrating and potentially as traumatizing.) After logging in for the first time, the system helpfully suggests that you create a system backup. This is a wise and useful thing to do, so that you can restore to original conditions, and I was impressed that Microsoft offered it.
Except…
It takes fiendishly long to generate the system image — after about two hours of waiting, I gave up last night and went to bed. During the night, the other “helpful” feature of Windows 7 kicked in, which was automatic downloading and installation of updates. As anyone who works with Microsoft knows, you can’t even think about an update without Windows needing to reboot, which it did … automatically. This interrupted the system backup, of course; and since the system has changed, the backup can’t even just pick up from where it left off.
Net result? I must begin the backup again and wait another two hours for it to run. I will have had my laptop for over a day without being able to run a single program on it. What is the overwhelming temptation, of course? To skip the backup “for now” and just dive in. So these two choices for Microsoft have the combined effect of discouraging proper computer hygiene — and for many users, probably taint the whole idea of backups in general.
Way to go, Microsoft!
(By the way, I have of course also now turned off the automatic install option, as it’s insane to let anyone just drop stuff into your operating system without at least some chance at review. Once again I am reminded of a mantra I’ve had since at least Windows 95: Whatever default behavior Microsoft settles on, it’s the wrong one. We could call their philosophy “default-to-fail”.)