Hearing the Martian

So, I take regular walks at work to keep from sitting all day.  I thought it would be good to listen to something other than music, so I've been catching up on my podcasts.  Until I started walking, I hadn't listened to podcasts since finishing fieldwork in Lodi.  You see, I like to read while on BART, and so I have music for that, and I would listen to podcasts while I was driving to and from Lodi.

Now my two main podcasts are Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier's "SModcast".  I've been listening to it pretty much since the beginning, and it's lots of fun.  However, I ran out of those.  I also listen to Kevin's "Fatman on Batman" in which he interviews people associated with Batman in movies, TV, and animation.  Lately it's become an overall celebration and chat about all things comic books with Marc Bernardin.  I have also recently run out of those as well.

So, I went looking and found out that Adam Savage does a podcast called "Still Untitled".  Now, it's not news that I really like "Mythbusters", so this just kind of follows along.  And this podcast is all kinds of fun.  My only complaint about it is that it is too short.  Or at least, it seems that way.

I've already written about Andy Weir's The Martian, but there is more to the story now.  Adam interviewed Andy in the video below:



And recently, I listened to the podcast spoilercast of The Martian.  I won't embed that one because if for some reason you haven't read it yet, and want to, the temptation to watch may be too strong.  Just remember that the movie opens Friday (tomorrow).  One of the things the guys brought up regarding how good the book is, is how great the audio book is.  You see, the majority of the book is written in first person journal format, and the act of having it read to you is a lot like hearing a real first person account of a tale.

So, I picked up the audio book.  It's about an 11 hour MP3.  I started it on Tuesday, and with travel to work, daily walks, and lunches and things, I have managed to be about 8.5 hours into it right now.  It took a bit of will power to get over personal the stigma of smiling, giggling, and snorting at the funny bits while I'm walking around the block in Walnut Creek or while on BART.  And those BART rides haven't all been just from MacArthur station to Walnut Creek, yesterday it was going through Oakland on the way to and from San Leandro.

If you can take the time, listen to the book.

And then tomorrow, go see the movie.

The Martian

So tonight I finished Andy Weir's The Martian.  In a nutshell, it's the story of a man who gets left behind on Mars by the rest of his crew during an evacuation when they think he's dead, and how he manages to survive alone on another planet.

Let me say now that I laughed harder at pints in this book than I have in a long time.  Probably since the first time I read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

It's got some intense survival portions and follows the normal path of a disaster tale of something go wrong and others go amazingly right.  But the book is told in a very straightforward manner.  There is math in it, but you don't have to know it all or even follow all of it.  The humor comes when the thoughts that all of us would be thinking just come out.  It's all very natural and highly entertaining.

I've got a few other books in my personal queue, but I'm thinking of putting some of his other stuff into rotation.

And that's the beauty of the Internet.  I've found other free fiction out there that is truly amazing.  I think I've linked to this site before, but there's a bunch of stories here.  Sam Hughes' Ed Stories are a ton of fun as well.

An Update

Sing Credence Clearwater Revival to me.  I dare you.

Tomorrow will be the conclusion of two months in Lodi.  Not much changes out here.  The site has reached a point of low visible change.  We're doing deep work that produces a lot of soil to be hauled off, but at the end of the day doesn't look that different.  Eventually yes, but not so much right now.

So then there are my evenings.  I get up early.  I'm talking nearly Ninja Space Monkey early.  Nearly.  I'm on site between 10 and 11 hours, typically and then I get back to the hotel.  I make dinner, and read a little.  I tend to fall asleep around 9:30.  I am reminded of the anger my mother speaks of occasionally about how I when I was very little, she would find me smiling and quiet in my crib when she came to get me in the morning.  I'm no less quiet now, and actually quieter than my parents ever were in the morning.  I really don't like a lot of noise until I've been up for at least half an hour.  Or more.

This has made breakfast a bit of a trial at the hotel as they have both a television going with KCRA morning news as well as background music.  I do tend to get the day's ear-worm there though.

Reading has been good.  I finished Pratchett's Discworld, and have blazed through three Stephen King books.  Doctor Sleep is really a great book that answers the questions "Whatever happened to Danny Torrance after the events in The Shining?"  The fun thing about Dan Torrance is that he is about my age.  If it's been several years since you've read The Shining, I would recommend re-reading it before hitting Doctor Sleep.  It's not essential, but it keeps you in the mindset.

Now I'm moving on to a book by Andy Weir.  The route to getting to this book for me was a little circuitous, but still kind of cool.  I read a lot of webcomics.  One of the oldest out there, and truly the standard for regularity in internet publishing (he's missed only one update in over 5,000 strips, and that was a software or server failure) is "Schlock Mercenary".  It has been the source of much humor over the years, one of my favorites coming from an AI saying, "Please don't make me add "rounding pi down to 3" to your list of crimes."

On the side, Howard Tayler paints miniatures, reviews movies, and occasionally reviews books.  Recently he recommended The Martian by Andy Weir.  I immediately recognized the name from a now defunct and truly missed webcomic "Casey and Andy".  Please note that the link goes tot he first strip, because the last strip is incredibly full of spoilers.  Another strip full of geekdom jokes, it makes me all the more exscited to check out the new book.