Discworld - Welcoming Death

Terry Pratchett's Mort focuses on who I think was Pratchett's favorite character Death.

Death in his multiversal manifestation appears in every book Terry Pratchett and in most of his short stories.  When typeset properly (always in the English publications, and eventually in the American publications) Death speaks in all capital letters, but with the small caps chosen, and with no quotation marks.  It's a typographical trick that reminds me of the Kirlian Saga by Piers Anthony who indicated different species speaking by using odd punctuation in place of quotation marks.

But this first book to focus on Death, begins to hint at how the power of belief works on the Discworld.  It's easy to get lost in the story of Mort taking over for Death, but the parts with Death fading to become (nearly) human at the end are important bits too.

There are times I consider reading the books my topic.  There are the Rincewind books, the Witches, the Watch, and Death.  But as I list the recurring items that get mentioned in the books, I see that Pratchett had a very strong feel for his entire world with its history, geography, and nations.

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This book contains appearances by:

Albert (Alberto Malich)

Ankh-Morpork

Bes Pelargic

Binky

Blind Io

Cabbage

Death

Fate

Harga's House of Ribs

Hoki

Leshp

Mort

Octarine Grass Country

Offler the Crocodile Headed God

Princess/Queen Keli of Sto Lat

Rincewind

Sham Harga
Scumble

The Curry Gardens restaurant

The Librarian

The Mended Drum

The Million to One Chance

The Ramtops

The Rite of Ashk-Ente

The Small Gods

Unseen University

Ysabell

Discworld - the First Witch

And so we come to the first book of Terry Pratchett's witches: Equal Rites.  And through this book we learn that Pratchett has a vision of not just of the geography of the City of Ankh-Morpork and the continents of the Disc, but a full structure of the various ways that the parts of the continent connect.  He has rivers and mountain ranges.  He also has the beginnings of the idea of the inherent magicalness of the Ramtop Mountains.

Equal Rites flows smoothly from beginning to end with just slight hiccups that I feel are more due to editing than writing.

Again, Pratchett had many ideas he wanted to get down, and you can fully sense that there is more to come.

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This book contains appearances by:

Ankh-Morpork

Bad Ass (of the Kingdom of Lancre)

Cabbage

Death

Dwarves

Eskarina Smith

Gargoyles

Granny Weatherwax

Headology

Hoki

Mr. Skiller
Mrs. Whitlow

Ohulan Cutash
Simon
The Dungeon Dimensions

The Fiddler's Riddle
The Librarian

The Million to One Chance

The Rag Rug

The Ramtops

The Shades

Unseen University
Zoons

Discworld - The Beginning - UPDATED

So before the weekend started, I finished Terry Pratchett's The Light Fantastic.  This is essentially part two of the first Discworld story continuing from The Colour of Magic.

In the first book, Pratchett's storytelling skills evolve in the four sub-parts of the book.  Puns are pretty in your face at the beginning, and some are even pointed out directly, but as the book progresses they begin to fade into the fabric of the story.

The world itself develops and becomes more real.  There is specific geography in both the cities of Ankh-Morpork and the Disc itself.  By the second book, Pratchett is moving into his signature style.  And at the same time, the seeds for future books are scattered throughout.

I know there are many out there who won't begin the series because of Pratchett's writing style int he beginning, but there are so few Rothfusses out there.  George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire is pretty consistent in skill, but he'd been writing other things for years.  Jim Butcher's Codex Alera is also consistently excellent, but he'd also already written several Harry Dresden books which a rereading will show a lot of writer's growth.

If you haven't read them, and enjoy a good fantasy story, I strongly recommend the Discworld.  Allow the writer to create his world.  By the second book he has found his pace.  And by the third book, he'll show he's in it for more than a marathon.

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Recurring characters and themes appearing in these books:

A curry restaurant

A statue of Malich the Wise

Ankh-Morpork

Bes Pelargic

Blind Hugh
Blind Io

Cohen the Barbarian

Death (and Binky)

Death's daughter (Isabell)

Dragons

Dungeon Dimensions

Eldritch means Oblong

Elves

Fate

Goldeneyes Silverhand Dactylos
Greyhald Spold

Hrun the Barbarian

Offler the Crocodile-Headed God

Rimfishers
Rincewind

The Assassins' Guild

The Broken Drum

The Brown Islands

The Circumfence
The City Watch (with a fat, lazy sergeant)

The Forest of Skund

The Four Horsemen

The Gingerbread House/The Witch

The Lady

The Librarian

The Luggage

The Octavo

The Patrician (still debated on whether or not this is Vetinari)

The Pointless Albatross
The Rite of Ashk-Ente

The Thieves' Guild

The Tooth Fairy

Traveling Magic Shops

Twoflower

Unseen University

Away from the Discworld

So, I've completed the books that I want to read from Terry Pratchett that are not part of the Discworld series.  Pretty much the only ones I've left out are The Carpet People and the Bromeliad Saga.

I've really enjoyed the Johnny Maxwell trilogy.

Nation is a fun story of south Pacific natives and a European shipwreck after a tsunami from a volcanic eruption.  And that's not completely redundant.

Dodger is a great historical fiction set in London before Charles Dickens has begun writing his fiction.

I only realized from this reading that The Dark Side of the Sun and Strata may be written in the same science fiction universe.  I can only imagine what Pratchett could have done as an author if he had decided to write his satire in an arcing sci-fi story instead of fantasy.

And now I have the 40 books of Discworld to look forward to, as well as several short stories, and addendum books.  Perhaps before I finish the series, Pratchett's final book (a fifth story of Tiffany Aching) will be released.

Sunsets

So, last year some time, I started taking pictures of sunsets.  With the new year, I thought I would try to take a picture every night.  I've missed a few due to uncontrollable circumstances.  The most annoying was the day I got the flat after riding through Temescal.

I had wanted to go to either the end of the Powell Street spit or the University Avenue park to get a shot of the sunset through the Gate, but I wasn't able to get home in time let alone get to the water.  They woudl have been amazing too, because the clouds were so fluffy.  I go a few walking my bike, but they aren't quite the same.

Today, I came across a link to a sunset taken from an office in the Mission on March 24 this year.

And here is what I got from that evening:

Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty...

So, my computer is on at home because I've been uploading my photos to my Amazon Cloud.  And the fan tends to run on high, because the innards are pretty crowded.

My cats have begun curling up next tot he computer to enjoy the warmth.  Usually they just change facing regularly to keep the heat even.

Jennifer just sent me this picture of Oscar:

I think his nose got cold.

Yeah, It's THAT Day Again

So, today is the kind of day that you trust nothing that you read online.

Especially from cartoonists/comic artists.

One year a bunch of syndicated artists traded drawing their strips.  Occasionally webcomic artists do the same.  The best trick was one year that a group of them wrote that they had decided to get out of doing comics and that another artist would be taking over for them.  If you only read one strip, you would have been fooled.  Fortunately, I was reading all of them, and found the circle of deceit.It was fun later that year to meet one of the artists at Wondercon and tell them they had gotten me.

I am fortunate that my best friends were never into fooling each other.  I think we all feared retaliation and escalation.

So I will leave with two facts.

First, today is the birthday of a friend.  And I feel sorry for him on his birthday every year.

Second, I've been in Emeryville now for four years.  This morning on my ride in to work, I saw my first (pair of) raccoon.  Jennifer and I encountered a family of skunks the night we were walking back from seeing "Man of Steel," but these are the first raccoon.  But in their defense, it is garbage pickup day.

PR Stupidity

Today, I came across this video of Patrick Moore refusing to drink a quart of glyphosate after claiming it was safe to drink:



And aside from the stupidity of the "doctor," I was reminded of the guy (found it, B.T. Collins) from the California Conservation Corps who, in an attempt to get people to accept the safety of malathion, drank a beaker of the stuff.  He got sick, but he did survive.

I wish I could find the picture of him at the press conference after he drank it.  The beaker is empty, and he's got this look on his face like he's going to throw up (and a little bit of, what the hell did I just do).

Learning Tool

So, I've mentioned before that Jennifer is very crafty.  She makes cards, art, and among other things, jewelry.

At the end of last year, she made a meditation mala for someone.  It looks amazing, and I think, better than many you see in shops.

There are 108 beads in the mala plus the Buddha bead and the tassel.  The person who uses it is supposed to say their mantra during meditation 108 times using the beads to keep track.  The mantra is supposed to be said 100 times, and the extra 8 allow for mistakes.

I found it interesting that 108 is actually pretty close to the number of elements in the periodic table, which, as I've mentioned before, I've been trying to memorize.  I only have the first three rows memorized (hydrogen to argon), mostly because the next row doubles the number of elements, and I've had difficulties.  So I decided I needed something to help me learn, and I asked Jennifer to make me a Mendeleev mala.

That's actually a name I just came up with.  I'd asked for a periodic table mala, but I like the alliteration.

So I came up with beads for each group (alkali metals, noble gases, halogens, etc.), and laid them out in atomic number order.  Then I needed an equivalent to a Buddha bead.  Jennifer started going through her collection of beads and pulled out one that reminded me of the first s orbital shell.  Then I thought it needed something else go with it and I came across a necklace that symbolically used the Bohric atomic model.

And finally yesterday, she finished it for me.

And she's said that she's going to hold me to learning the table now.  The problem I discovered is that when I was in college the bottom column of the table wasn't complete yet even with experimental/theoretical elements.  Fortunately I have a couple apps that have a complete table.  But today I learned that even the apps aren't up to date as the above link to the Dynamic Periodic Table has two (flerovium and livermorium) that aren't named in my apps.

The Sign

In in my Terry Pratchett tribute/re-read, I have been through Good Omens and the Johnny Maxwell trilogy.

Good Omens is a favorite for the collaboration with Neil Gaiman, for being another book with good memories of when I read it, and also great fun at author signings.  I read the book from the library, and bought the large trade paperback.  Then when I found the first printing at Dark Carnival in Berkeley, I bought it.  Then when Terry and Neil came to Berkeley for signing at the old Cody's Book Store, I brought it in to be signed.  Terry was first (and was happy to have released his book a month before Neil so that it would be on the bestseller list before being knocked off by Neil), and he asked if I knew that Neil would be coming in for a signing soon, and was I going to be there.  I said yes, and he said, "Tell him I said, 'Rabbit."'  When I saw Neil, I said, "Terry says, 'Rabbit.'"  Neil look at me, and said, "What kind?"  Unfortunately I never got to see Terry again, and was not able t o continue the game of long term telephone.

The Johnny Maxwell trilogy is a series of books that may be classified as juvenile, but sometimes those are the best books. They're a thoroughly fun series about an English boy who has very strange things happen to him, and his friends get caught up with it all.  Only You Can Save Mankind was popular enough to be have been made into a radio show, and Johnny and the Dead and Johnny and the Bomb were both made into BBC productions.

Good Omens has also recently been made into a BBC radio show, and a movie is supposedly in development.

All of these books have the characteristic of being engaging books in that I can almost completely lose myself in them on BART to the point that I have sometimes had to rush to be ready for my stop.

Tribute Reading

When Robin Williams died, I listened to his old works.  It felt good to hear his voice again, and chuckle, laugh, and giggle at all the bits that marked me as a kid.

Last week, I decided it was time to re-read Terry Pratchett.  I'm going to save the Discworld for last.  I'm going to read his other work first starting with the best collaboration I've ever read: Good Omens.

Neil hasn't been able to write anything about his friend of thirty years, but apparently he had an appearance last week that turned into a remembrance of Sir Terry.



And there's been an article out about Neil's daughter Rhianna as well.

Adn then there's this from the Daily Telegraph:

Sir Terry - Rest in Peace

I just read that Terry Pratchett passed away this morning.

I remember reading the first five books of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series in college.  Before he passed, Pratchett ended up writing a total of 40 books in the series plus supplements, and the doesn't include his other series: The Bromeliad, the Johnny series, and the Long Earth series.

I have regularly re-read his books to recapture the feelings from when I first read them as well as to find things int eh stories that I missed previously.  Pratchett was so intelligent that he would hide items and history from our world in the Discworld while giving it just a twist.

My favorite was the Dwarven throne, the Scone of Stone.  Dwarves use bread in a violent manner creating weapons from them.  The durability of the Dwarf Bread had them create their throne out of their bread.

It was probably five years after reading about it in The Fifth Elephant, that I read about the Stone of Scone which was the Scottish coronation stone.

And he did this all of the time.  As well as planting the seeds of his future books inside others.  Or mining his previous stories for ideas.

All of his work enthralls me, and he will be sorely missed.

Morning Perfume

So, I've been riding my bike to work exclusively now for almost two years.  And aside from the occasional out of town assignment, I've been faithful.  However, this is the first winter-to-spring that I've been riding through my local neighborhood.

The past couple weeks I've been fortunate enough to be treated to waves of jasmine scent as I work my way towards Market.  And the last week or so that has been mixed with the smell of citrus.

Now I need to find out what kind of tree it is, because it's not one that fruits.  We used to have some growing outside of our place in Pacheco.  They smell amazing, but apparently my Google-Fu is weak this morning, because I'm not finding anything based on my description.

75 Years of Superman

Now comes the big one.

Again, my first memory of Superman is from the Super Friends cartoon, and he's always been my favorite (aside from having a Robin costume because it seemed more logical as a kid to be a sidekick).

But my first Superman comic?  That's really hard to remember.  And after some research (thank you Grand Comics Database) it was Action Comics #443.

Reading the synopsis, I remember the story of Superman confusing Brainiac by hypnotizing the world into reversing their knowledge of Clark Kent and Superman.  Looking back it's pretty strange (as a lot of that period stories were).

It was a small introduction, and I actually had the Superman #283 from the same month.

Which again was a throwing people off the secret identity trail.  I think.  The second story with Mr. Mxyzptlk was more memorable with the imp bringing the statue of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial to life.

But it was from these humble beginnings (again thanks to my Dad's friend and his drug store) that my comic collection eventually grew.

75 Years of Batman

My first memory of Batman is tied up in both the Super Friends cartoon and what has come to be called the Batman '66 television show.

But my first comic book?  After some web searching, it was Batman #260 (a 100-page special).

I remember a story where the Joker has poisoned Batman who will die laughing.  And things just keep getting worse as the Joker tells horrible punning jokes.  The Joker is freeing inmates from Arkham, and Batman comes up against Two-Face who has a gun stolen from a guard.  This was my first encounter with Two-Face as he wasn't used in the TV show.  Two-Face flips his coin and it comes up heads, so he doesn't shoot Batman (who is on the floor laughing painfully), and allows Batman to lock him back up in his cell.

Looking at the cover, I can vaguely remember the story with the Riddler, but the rest are a blank to me.

75 Years of The Flash

I should probably think back and try to do this for Superman and Batman, but I just had this idea today after reading DC Comics' post on Google+.

So this was my first Flash comic book, The Flash #231.

I got this book from a friend of my dad who ran a drugstore and gave me a bunch of books that hadn't sold.

It was a crash course introduction to the Rogues Gallery for me, and also a great example of just how fast the Flash is.  The second story in the book with Green Lantern also introduced me to Aaron Burr years before the famous Got Milk commercial.

The Tools and the Talent - Conclusion

So, yesterday, I found a local bike shop: Rivendell Bicycle Works.  Now it turns out that the majority of their business is online, but they still had two inner tubes for me and a patch kit.

I decided to keep one fresh tube at work and one at home, and then did some patch work on the existing tube.  It's really a simple process if you follow all the instructions.  Letting the glue dry a bit before application is key.

And it's all holding.  The ride to BART yesterday was fine, and this morning has all gone well.

The Tools and the Talent - Part Two

So, the first rule of bicycle flat repair is always check the tire to make sure that whatever may have caused the first flat is out of the tire.

When I got to Walnut Creek today and I was riding down the ramp to cross the street, the bike fishtailed a bit.  It did this in a way that reminded me of hauling rock in dad's pickup truck my year at home between undergrad and grad school.  I was hauling pea gravel a half-yard at a time to fill up the bed for the new hot tub my parents had bought.  And half yard was about all that the truck could handle.  When I took a turn, I could feel the center of the wheels slide out.  It required very slow travel.

So I've jsut taken the rear bike wheel off again, and through careful feeling and flexing of the tire, I found a nice piece of glass that with pressure was poking a hole in the inner tube.

I guess I'll walk over to one of the downtown WC bike shops, and get me a new inner tube.  Maybe a couple.  And a patch kit.

RIP - Leonard Nimoy - UPDATED

You will be missed, sir.

Here is the NY Times article.

---  UPDATE ---

And a fitting farewell posted on another site that I feel needs to be borrowed.

Readership Spike

Literally.

So in a day I get a few readers.  After a new post, I get 30 or more.  But on Monday, I got 616 hits.  That quickly put me over 50,000 pageviews of all time, but I just have to wonder, why?

I mean it weird.  Its like someone, in one day, read my archives or something.

Because it's not like a single page garnered any coordinate spike of interest.  And I've kind of lost my international following.  The only country that really is lit up this week is the USA.

I guess while I may have some sort of draw, I don't have the international draw that John does.  He's talked about previous big readerships from Russia and other places.