A painting of me

Sea of Poppies

   11 January 2013, mid-morning

I finished reading Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh. Shima has declared it one of her favourite books, if not her absolute favourite book. That’s a pretty strong endorsement. It’s been well reviewed as well. As I started reading I wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about.

The book begins in a rural village in North India and ends on the high seas of the Indian Ocean. The road between those two points is a little bit slow. We meet character after seemingly unrelated character. Slowly you start to see where they will all end up. By the time you get to the third section of the book the story has really picked up. I am remiss to say much more than that. Suffice it to say its some solid historical fiction with a great cast of characters. Sea of Poppies reminds me of what a well edited Neal Stephenson story might look like. The language and sailor slang much of the book’s dialog is written in can be a bit impenetrable at times, though one can usually figure out the sentiment trying to be conveyed.

Sea of Poppies is the first book of the Ibis trilogy. The book is an exciting well written story. The second book River of Smoke is already available. I plan to start it shortly.

Comment [1]  

  • Why did Flickr drop the "e"? 

    From the co-founder, Stewart Butterfield, we get the following answer:

    Because the guy who owned the domain http://flicker.com wouldn’t sell it and we loved the name. Dropping the “e” was Caterina Fake’s idea — I was against it at first because it looked so wrong, but I eventually came to see the wisdom: it was easy for us to get the domain, but it was also more distinctive & recognizable, easier to search for, etc.

    It’s funny they weren’t actively trying to be hip or start some sort of Web 2.0 trend.

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Photography is a thing I used to do

   20 December 2012, late evening

I thought after having Mythilli the number of photographs I would take would increase, but that hasn’t been the case at all. I used to be an avid photographer. At some point I stopped being one. I had some sort of crisis of faith, I suppose.

One of the last lines in Six Feet Under is, “You can’t take a picture of this. It’s already gone.” Photography is an artistic pursuit, but it’s also a documentary one. Photography is all about capturing a moment in time. Well, sort of.

I used to take lots of photos at concerts I went to and then I more or less just stopped. When I watch people photographing a concert now I find they look ridiculous. You are a few feet from a band, watching them play through some shitty LCD screen or viewfinder. Sometimes you should just stop and enjoy the experience.

I think about this a lot when taking pictures of my baby.

All of that said, I should take photographs again. I quite like it. And every so often I take a photograph that is pretty fantastic, if I do say so myself.

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  • Postscript: Robert Bork, 1927-2012. 

    Robert Bork, who died Wednesday, was an unrepentant reactionary who was on the wrong side of every major legal controversy of the twentieth century. The fifty-eight senators who voted against Bork for confirmation to the Supreme Court in 1987 honored themselves, and the Constitution. In the subsequent quarter-century, Bork devoted himself to proving that his critics were right about him all along.

    This is a pretty awesome obituary. (If you aren’t Robert Bork, anyway.)

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Instagram's Terms of Service

   17 December 2012, mid-afternoon

Some or all of the Service may be supported by advertising revenue. To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you. If you are under the age of eighteen (18), or under any other applicable age of majority, you represent that at least one of your parents or legal guardians has also agreed to this provision (and the use of your name, likeness, username, and/or photos (along with any associated metadata)) on your behalf. — The new Instagram terms of service, emphasis mine.

In the back of my mind I knew this day would come, but now that it’s here it isn’t any less disappointing. Instagram’s new rules are pretty draconian. A lot of times websites will have unfortunately worded terms of service, but they often written the way they are to facilitate displaying your content on their servers, etc. This language seems quite clear when it comes to Instagram / Facebook

Flickr’s new iOS application is quite nice, but I don’t know how I feel about spamming my Flickr feed with photos of Mythilli. Part of the original appeal of Instagram was that it was a nice light-weight way to share little snapshots. Flickr is a big mix of people posting one-off photos, big sets of photos from their vacations, and all sorts of other random stuff. Still, Flickr probably has the nicest terms of service when it comes to this sort of thing.

I really love Instagram, so this change is really bumming me out.

Comment [10]  

  • Canada puts asylum toddlers behind razor wire - thestar.com 

    “They are not jails,” insists Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. “In the case of the Toronto one, for example, the main one, it’s a former three-star hotel with a fence around it.”

    If you need to start a sentence about where you are housing children with, “They are not jails,” you know you’re doing it wrong. Is Canada trying to out-class Australia here?

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  • Highly Available Real Time Push Notifications and You. 

    Flickr is coming back out of retirement, apparently. Their new iPhone application is pretty great. They’ve slowly started doing more things with the site itself. I don’t know if all of this is too little too late. They still have a big user base and lots of photos. It’s clear the site could have been so much more: they had a lot of talented people working for them.

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  • A Land Without Guns: How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths. 

    To get a gun in Japan, first, you have to attend an all-day class and pass a written test, which are held only once per month. You also must take and pass a shooting range class. Then, head over to a hospital for a mental test and drug test (Japan is unusual in that potential gun owners must affirmatively prove their mental fitness), which you’ll file with the police. Finally, pass a rigorous background check for any criminal record or association with criminal or extremist groups, and you will be the proud new owner of your shotgun or air rifle. Just don’t forget to provide police with documentation on the specific location of the gun in your home, as well as the ammo, both of which must be locked and stored separately. And remember to have the police inspect the gun once per year and to re-take the class and exam every three years.

    If you are buying something that only exists to shoot and kill other people it really should be that difficult.

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