Sighs and Musings

Life : Anyone Still Out There?

I haven’t posted a lot recently – what writing I have been doing has been longer format stuff that doesn’t fit on this blog. However, I have had a few ideas for shorter essays and was wondering if anyone was still looking here for new posts. So... if you are still following this blog, post a comment, or otherwise let me know. Thanks.

Posted by Steven at 02:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Life : 50 years on

Today is my 50th birthday. A time for introspection and refection – two things I do quite well.

To start off with, this is not the only odometer that is rolling around a bunch of digits this year:

* 50 years ago today, I was born
* 40 years ago this coming April I began my journey following Jesus
* 30 years ago this January, I started my career as a full-time software engineer
* 20 years ago this January, I moved to California
* 10 years ago… Well, there are some things that happened 10 years ago; but nothing that cries out as a landmark to celebrate. Perhaps 10 years from now I’ll think otherwise.

Oh, and 23 years ago this coming March, I got married (not exactly in sync with the rest – so it goes).

So I’ll consider these in turn.

50 Years of Life and life is good. While there are many things I would be tempted to change if I could, the reality is that I’m not at all convinced that I would be a better person if I changed any of them. Even my worst regrets have built positive things into my life, so should I regret them at all? The reality is that compared to 99% of the people in the world, my life is amazing; so on what basis can I complain about anything? The truth is that while there are still things I want to do with the years ahead, my life has been a good one.

40 years of faith and my love of God and appreciation of His love for me continues to grow. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that my faith is a dynamic thing, constantly growing. My relationship with God continues to get stronger as he works in me to help me see the world from His point of view. I don’t think I would be able to appreciate my life as well as I do if it wasn’t for God’s Spirit in my life acting as comforter, counselor and teacher.

30 years of engineering and frankly I’m getting tired of it. Don’t get me wrong – I have a great job working with great people. It would be hard to imagine a better engineering position elsewhere. It’s just that I’m starting to feel like I’ve done everything I want to do as a software engineer. Yes, I can keep doing the same things for many more years; but I could also retire today as an engineer and have no regrets about my career.

22 years of marriage, and I think we have finally figured it out. Seriously. We’ve had our ups and downs over the years; but at this point I think we both understand each other enough and understand how to cooperate in the cramped space of a marriage enough so that 1 plus 1 really is greater than 2. Learning how to be married really is a lot like learning how to be part of a pair of people trying to cook in a tiny kitchen (perhaps preparing three dishes – two that you are doing on your own and one that you are doing together). It’s all about finding the balance between giving each other enough room that you can get your own things done, helping each other out when extra hands are needed, and finding joy in the things you discover to do together.

20 years in California and the move to the city has kept it fresh (for now). We moved up to SF in part because we had grown bored of living in the South Bay. Too much suburbia. Of course moving up here brought into sharp relief the things we really did like about where we used to live; but it’s all under an hour away, and I’m down there at least once a week anyway. We both still miss the East Coast (particularly our friends back there); but at this point we’d also miss California if we ever moved away.

OK, so much for retrospectives. What’s next?

I’m really overcome with the sense that I for all I have learned in the first 50 years of my life, what I need to focus on in the years ahead is passing all that on to other people. I’m still not sure by what means to do that. Write some books? Become a teacher? Become a pastor? All of the above? I’m not sure; but I really think the focus of my life needs to switch into output mode. What that will involve in terms of lifestyle changes is unclear; but changes are needed to go with the new focus. I have seen God doing a lot of clearing the undergrowth from my life the last few years. I think that was in preparation for what’s next.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Life : The prodigal returns to the fold

Four years ago (almost to the day - check out the post) I - who has started developing for the Macintosh 2 months after it was release and who worked for Apple for 7 years developing the Mac OS - abandoned the Mac for the PC. You can read the post to see how and why that transition happened. In essence I did not see the value investing my time in learning a whole new OS (Mac OS X) and a new programming language (Objective C) and neither did a lot of the independent developers who wrote the cool programs that made the Mac fun for me.

The news is that I am typing this post up on my new iMac that rests in the place of pride on my desk and my old PC is sitting in the corner, disconnected.

The reasons for my return to the Mac is manifold; but the real game changer is the iPhone. Now that I have a programmable device that I carry just about everywhere with me, the ability to program it for myself (even just utilities for my own private use) is something I can’t resist. What’s more, a cursory examination of the iPhone App Store provides ample evidence that the indie developers have returned to Apple as iPhone developers.

On top of that, the new Macs (being Intel-chip based) can run Windows, and I am setting up this computer to dual-boot, so I can still use Windows on those occasions I need to.

What’s more, I have a sense that God wants me to invest my energies into more creative activities (writing, programming, etc.) and to spend less time playing games, and the Mac is just a better computer for that (with fewer distractions for games).

Now I still have my 12” Sony laptop that I use to read Email (I use that because I can take it on trips easily, and I don’t have to worry about syncing my email archives between different machines); but for the foreseeable future I expect to be using a Mac a my primary computer at home.

Anne (who never left the Mac) is quite pleased.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

TV : Dollhouse: Epitaph One

OK, if that’s where Joss is headed, I’m in for the ride.

For as much as I was looking forward to Joss Whedon’s return to television with the new show “Dollhouse” this past Fall, I have to admit I was disappointed in the first few episodes (although I understand that was a result of Network’s interference - I've also seen the original pilot and it was much better). The series did pick up significantly in the second 6 (of 12) episodes, with a couple being superb. But in the end, while I could see the show being a venue for examining certain interesting ideas, I didn’t have a sense of where he was headed with it as a series – how would things evolve to keep the show interesting after multiple years?

Now I understand, and really want to see this play out.

The reason I understand is the episode “Epitaph One”, intentionally unaired but also intentionally included in the DVD boxed set. The existence of this episode requires a bit of explanation. The Fox TV network only ordered 12 episodes for season 1 and would only ever air those 12 episodes they paid for. However, in the international market, DVD boxed sets with 13 or more episodes are able to negotiate much more profitable deals, so the people at the division of 20th Century Fox responsible for the DVD sets asked if Joss & co. could somehow create a 13th episode for the DVDs. Thus the “missing 13th episode” came into existence.

What makes this so interesting is at the time this episode was created, it wasn’t at all clear if the series would be renewed for a second season (odds were actually against it). So, for this final episode Joss & company decided to make something of a “series finale” – something that would provide a kind of closure to the show should it be canceled. The effect is that “Epitaph One” gives a pretty clear idea of the overall arc that Joss has planned for the series without giving away so many details as to make any additional seasons produced anticlimactic.

And a pretty amazing arc it is.

“Epitaph One” is set in 2019 in a post-apocalyptic world where civilization has completely collapsed (and in fact has been collapsed for a while, so there are fewer than 10 years before things fall apart). What’s more, it becomes clear that the Dollhouse (or at least Dollhouse technology) is responsible for humanity’s downfall. There are devices that reprogram any person that come to near to them into killing machines and the streets are filled will crowds who kill anyone who is not reprogrammed. Other weaponized applications of Dollhouse tech are also implied. The story follows a small band of survivors trying to find someplace safe who stumble on the ruins of the LA Dollhouse in which the rest of the show is set. They access stored memories in the Dollhouse archives to provide “flashbacks” which give some hints of how this all happened and allowing for some great scenes with some of the series regulars (The last scene with the character Topher is an amazing performance).

Now Joss has hinted that some of the events in the show were written to be deliberately misleading as to how things came about; but even with some variation, it is clear that Joss’s vision for Dollhouse has some real scope. I hope he is able to run it out to the end.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

TV : Torchwood: Children of Earth

Now that’s the way to do SciFi on TV.

I’ve not been a big fan of the BBC television series “Torchwood” (broadcast in the US on BBC-America). I checked out the first few episodes of season 1; and since then, when there have been episodes that that got a lot of buzz in the UK, I watched those select episodes when they aired in the ‘States. The series, a more “adult” spin-off of “Doctor Who” isn’t bad, it just didn’t seem to me to have a lot to say beyond entertainment.

For season 3 however, they decided to do something different. Rather than produce a weekly serial, Russell T. Davies decided to do the season as a mini-series. Five episodes over five consecutive nights, telling one large story. The results were comparable to the new of Battlestar Galactica in quality.

At a high level, the plot is fairly generic SciFi - aliens show up and make some demands of humanity with the threat that they will wipe us out if we don’t comply. What the producers of the show did right was that rather than focus on the aliens and technology (as most SciFi does), the series is really about the humans’ reactions to what happens. The show holds up a mirror to human nature, and what it shows isn’t pretty. In many ways, the series asks the same question that Battlestar Galactica did - are there things that we can do to save ourselves that make us no longer worth saving?

The result is a study in the banality of evil, as civil servants try to do “what’s best for the nation” while politicians work to maintain “plausible deniability” and save themselves. Peter Capaldi does a great job playing the civil servant John Frobisher - a tragic villain who is in way over his head and is left dangling by his superiors. The role is one that could have played more clearly dark; but Capaldi’s performance adds a lot of depth to the character to help you see his internal struggle and fear. He is at some level the “good man” his admin’ claims he is; but step by step he is drawn into the path of ruin.

The producers also made some good decisions about the presentation of the aliens - keeping them in a mist-filled room so the audience never gets a clear look at them, allowing the audience to fill in the gaps with their own nightmares; aided by the random shrieks and green ooze that occasionally splashes against the glass wall of the chamber. On top of that you have Capaldi’s performance making Frobisher’s horror at being so close to the creature palpable. What the aliens want from us is also held off until the middle of the series, and why they want it isn’t revealed until the final segment - to great effect. This series could be used as a textbook on the lesson in writing that “less is more”.

I’ll also add that the show made a great use of the regular characters. Early in the series, Torchwood (the people in the best position to fight the aliens) is destroyed because they know things about these specific aliens that would be an embarrassment for the government, and our heros spend the series on the run while trying to help humanity. Denied the use of their usual equipment, we get a much better sense of who these characters are as people.

I’m particularly impressed with how Captain Jack Harkness (leader of Torchwood and a human who is actually from the 51st century) is handled. This is a character originally created for the series Doctor Who and became a part of the spin-off when it was started. While on ‘Who, Harkness was granted, through unusual and unique means, a kind of immortality (he becomes an intrinsic part of the definition of the universe, so no matter what happens to him, the universe restores him). The result is that he literally has a death wish (he fights aliens in hope that one day he’ll meet someone with the technology that can actually kill him). This series was however the first time I really bought from the writing and performance why he wants to die - a man who lives forever collects lot of regrets.

Well done. I have no interest in owning the DVDs of seasons 1 and 2; but I will be buying season 3 when it comes out.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Life : Learning

I just wanted to acknowledge here a lack of substantive posts. I’m in a learning mode these days and while writing is integral to how I lock understanding in my brain (and therefore plays a critical role when I have finished learning something), it can be problematic when applies too soon, thus locking incomplete understandings of things into my mind. I do have some older topics (whose understanding is unlikely to change) that I could write about, and have a couple of times sat down at the keyboard to do that so there would be some “meat” on this blog; but I’m just too focused on other topics to do them justice.

I hope to have much to write about when this is done; but only God knows when that will be.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Life : I remember more

It is common in our culture to talk about certain events as being so overwhelming that you always remember where you were when you first heard about them. Thinking about the moon landing being commemorated this week got me thinking about the other marker events I have experienced.

I don’t recall where I was when I heard that President Kennedy was shot – I was a bit too young to appreciate that. I do however remember sitting in front of the TV watching the funeral procession on TV (and being surprised that there was more to the tune of the funeral march than the phrase that everyone hums – dum dum de-dum, da de-dum de-dum de-dum).

As noted last week, I do recall exactly where I was for the launch, landing, and moonwalk for Apollo 11.

I also recall exactly where I was when I heard about the accident on Apollo 13. I had gone to bed; but was having trouble sleeping so I went out to the kitchen to get some water and saw my mother watching the TV (turned down low). We stayed up together for a bit watching the coverage.

I recall where I was when I heard that that Nixon resigned. I was at a Christian camp that week, and one of my cabin-mates told me as I was walking back to the cabin while he was headed to the common building to see if he could get more details.

I recall where I was when I heard about the Challenger accident – I was at my office at GCC . There were lots of TVs around the office (leftovers from our videogame days), and most of us spent the rest of the afternoon watching coverage together.

I recall where I was when I heard about 9/11. I had just gotten up that morning (early Pacific Time – I went into the office early those days to have some overlap with our UK office) and tuned on Headline News as usual. I was tuned in when the second plane hit (Anne was also awake at that point, although we can’t remember if I woke her up or not). It was a tough decision to stop watching the unfolding drama and go into the office (and as it turns out my company gave us all permission to head home if we wanted).

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Introspection , Life , Observations : I remember

I know exactly where I was, 40 years ago today at 9:32 AM EST – standing in a boat in the middle of the Indian River in Florida looking northeast with a big smile on my face. I was there watching the launch of Apollo 11 from Cape Kennedy (along with throngs of others who had boat and knew that the closest you could get to the launch site was on water).

I also know where I was at a quarter past four, 40 years ago next Monday – in our family living room in Cocoa Beach, watching the landing with my mother and brother. My father, who had worked on the Lunar Landing Module, was still at the office – on call in case there was an emergency. I was in the same location 7 hours later (I was given special dispensation to stay up late that night), watching the first moon-walk.

It was an interesting time of my life, living just south of “the cape” with my father involved in the space program when it was the center of national attention (of course, many of my school mates’ fathers were similarly involved). Behind our house was a 4 story office complex where CBS TV had space, and once we spotted Walter Cronkite on the walkway as we looked up from our backyard. The open stairwell of the complex was also a prime location for watching “lesser” spacecraft launches (satellites, etc.) – either that or down on the beach (depending on which launch pad they were lifting off from). Launches of some sort were fairly common, and the local newspaper always listed the next launch on the upper right corner of the front page, so we all knew when to pause and look.

I had my models of all of the manned spacecraft, and was actually pretty good at drawing the Lunar Module (for those who know what it looked like can appreciate that accomplishment). Dad would sometime share with me some of the designs of the LM, fostering my interest in engineering. There was a real sense in those days that smart people who applied themselves could accomplish great things – not necessarily make a lot of money; but to do something they could be proud of.

And that was really the bottom line of being there at that time and place – pride. Not necessarily pride in America (although there was plenty of that to go around); but pride in humanity – that we had broken free of our home shores and ventured out into the larger universe. It was the start of a new age, although one which hindsight has shown to be slow to progress.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Life : Farewell Charles N. Brown

I have commented before on the virtues of Science Fiction Fandom (with a capital F) as a community. As with all effective communities, Fandom is held together by a small number of individuals who served as a glue that helped bind us together - some serving the community by organizing WorldCon and related gatherings, others serving by keeping us all informed of what was happening with others in the community. Charles N. Brown was one of the latter. His is not a name that people outside of Fandom would likely recognize; but the degree to which we in the community are indebted to him is measured by the 29 Hugo Awards he has won over the years.

Back in 1968, Charles N. Brown started Locus magazine (about which I have also written before). It won its first Hugo in 1971, and has been winning them pretty consistently ever since. As I have said before, Locus is to written science fiction what Variety magazine is to the movie industry – the “paper of record” where you go to find out who is doing what in Sci Fi writing and publishing. What deals are made, what books and stories have been published, what rights have been sold, and (relevant to this post) obituaries.

Charles N. Brown died Sunday, peacefully in his sleep. This was not entirely unexpected for the 72 year old who has had his share of health problems over the years. I met him twice (briefly) at WorldCon; but didn’t get a chance to talk to him much. Still his impact on the community has been significant, and his loss will be felt.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Life : Moderation

As some of you may have noticed, this blog has been getting some attention from a volume source of junk comments. I have therefore switched it into moderation mode. You may still comment; but will need to wait for me to approve your comments before they appear.

This should be transitory; but we will see.

Posted by Steven at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)