Author: Andrew Huey

Harry Potter withdrawal

Steven Levitt has a short bit up on the Freakonomics blog mentioning that he’s just finished the last Harry Potter book, and now has been “left aimless in Harry’s absence” and would like to know what he can read to “restore meaning to his life.” There are a lot of great suggestions in the comments, including not just books, but some comics too.

It’s interesting to see what people think of when they’re asked to suggest new material to a Harry Potter fan. The Potter books have a certain ineffable quality to them that has made them popular far beyond the audience that would usually be attracted to a “young adult” fantasy series. Mr. Levitt certainly doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who reads a lot of Piers Anthony, for instance. (Not that there’s anything wrong with Piers Anthony.) I do think that any open-minded, intelligent reader could find some great underrated stuff in the SF & Fantasy aisle in Borders, given a little direction, though.

Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy is mentioned by several commenters. That’s certainly a work that has some superficial similarities to the Potter books — it’s a fantasy series featuring a couple of young kids as protagonists. And it’s a great work. I think somebody could probably get a great term paper out of comparing and contrasting the themes in Potter vs HDM. (And, come to think of it, I’d bet a good number of high school students probably already *have* written that paper.)

There are several recommendations for the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett. Also great books, but different in tone from Harry Potter. Come to think of it, I’ve only read one Discworld book (Mort). I think I have another one around here somewhere waiting to be read. I should really dig that out and read it.

On the comics front, there are a few recommendations for Fables, which I blogged about recently. (I now have the first six volumes waiting to be read.) And Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (and some other Gaiman stuff) gets mentioned. (I’ve read all of Sandman, and I’d certainly second the recommendation on that.)

Stephen King’s Dark Tower series gets a couple of mentions. I haven’t read any of that, but I’m getting curious about it. Maybe after I get through some of the other stuff in my pile, I’ll pick up a couple of Dark Tower books and give them a try.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell gets a couple of nods. I read that a couple of years ago, and it’s great. Definitely a good book to read after the Potter series, if you’re interested in seeing how another great author handles magic.

There are a couple of recommendations for Orson Scott Card’s Ender books. I’ve read the first, Ender’s Game, and have the next few in a pile waiting to be read. Good stuff, but I don’t really see any relation to Potter, other than (again) a young protagonist.

And Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels get mentioned too. I’ve now read through all but the most recent Thursday Next book, and I’m definitely worried about withdrawal after I finally finish that one! (Hopefully, Fforde hasn’t finished with Thursday books yet, though.)

So, in a nutshell, there’s lots of great stuff to read out there, both books and comics! I’m curious as to whether Mr. Levitt would consider picking up any of the comics work mentioned in the comments. Would a serious economist like him consider picking up a Sandman or Fables graphic novel? Would your average businessman want to be seen reading a comic in public? I don’t know. It’s never been a concern for me, but then again, I’m a nerd, and proud of it.

Gary Gygax

I saw in the news today that Gary Gygax has passed away. I haven’t played D&D in years, but I have very fond memories of some great D&D games with my friends back when I was a kid. I remember bugging my mom to buy the Basic D&D box when I saw it in a store, back around 1979. Bless her, she did buy it for me, though she was a little leery about it. I had no idea what the game was about, mind you, I just thought the box art was cool. When I opened the box, and figured out that it wasn’t just a board game, I got sucked in. I remember being really excited about it. At some point, I transitioned to AD&D, and of course bought the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual. Those books sure saw a lot of use.

Though I haven’t really thought much lately about D&D, it did have a big effect on my youth. At one time, role-playing games were pretty much the center of my (geeky) social life. I was usually the DM, so I’d say that RPGs had a lot to do with my development of a lot of key skills, including leadership, organizational skills, creativity, consensus-building, and all that good stuff.

Thanks, Gary, for making the teenage years of many a geek just a bit more bearable, and maybe even a bit exciting now and again!

BlackBerry Enterprise Server

We implemented a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) at work last week. I was afraid it would be overly complicated, but it wasn’t that bad, and we seem to have it running smoothly now. We’re running it on top of Lotus Domino. I’ve found that the documentation for BES is OK, but if you hit a snag, you’re going to need to head out on the internet and do some searching. The best place to find BES information seems to be the BES Admin Corner at BlackBerryForums.com.

CrackBerry.com has some useful stuff in their forums, too. For Domino-specific information, I’ve found besdomino.blogspot.com and notesberry.org useful.

I’ve been almost completely ignorant of the BlackBerry platform until now. I’ve got plenty of experience with Windows Mobile and Palm, going back several years, but I just never had occasion to pick up a BlackBerry. It turns out that they work pretty well! We won’t get to keep one in the IT department, unfortunately. We’ve just got one to use for testing that we’ll have to give back at some point. I looked into picking one up myself, but I don’t see any way to do that (and hook it up to the BES) for less that $50 per month, and that’s a bit much. I guess I should be glad that the company’s not making me carry around a BlackBerry 24×7, but it does seem like it would be a useful thing to have.

For now, I can still check my e-mail on my Moto SLVR via RemoMail, which I’ve blogged about before. And when I’m near a wifi access point, I can always use my iPod Touch.

WonderCon odds and ends

A few random things I didn’t mention in my previous WonderCon posts:

The Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon looks like it’ll be worth watching. I like the design work and animation. It’s got a distinctive style that works well without being obviously derivative of any other cartoons out there right now.

Outside of the con, I finally got around to visiting SF MOMA. It’s not a huge museum, but they’ve got some nice stuff. The Matisse and Beyond exhibit had some nice pieces in it.

At the Bill Willingham panel, he read a short passage from an upcoming Fables book. This was, of course, cool in and of itself, but also cool is that he read it from a Sony Reader. He mentioned that he was interested in the Kindle, but knew he could get his hands on the Sony device quicker, so he went with that one. He seemed to be pretty happy with it, except for one quirk he mentioned regarding the sorting of books by Author name. He said that it sometimes put his stuff under “Willingham, Bill” and sometimes under “Bill Willingham” and he wasn’t sure why.

WonderCon – Sunday

The day started out a bit rainy and windy, so I got a little wet on my way to the Moscone Center this morning, but it was nice and clear when I surfaced at 5pm. Hopefully, everything will be fine for the flight home tomorrow.

I bought a few comics today, including the first ten issues of the Justin Gray / Jimmy Palmiotti Jonah Hex book. I’ve heard good things about it, so when I saw the issues in somebody’s dollar boxes, I grabbed them.

I spent most of the day in panel rooms. I went to the Tim Sale panel, the Wildstorm panel, and the Art of the Cover panel that Mark Evanier does every year. That’s always fun.

Finally, I ended the day watching the New Frontier movie. I was quite impressed with it. I think they captured the essence of the original Darwyn Cooke comic reasonably well. The animation, character design, and overall look of the movie was great. I was afraid that it would all be watered down, but it was very well done and true to the original.

Overall, it was a great con. Not too crowded, but certainly not empty. Plenty of good guests and interesting panels. Definitely a good little late-winter vacation!

Rainy, Windy WonderCon

It’s Sunday morning in San Francisco, and the big storm is hopefully going to peter out today. At some point, I’ll have to leave the hotel and meander down to the Moscone Center. Hopefully, I won’t get too wet doing that. I had a good day at the con yesterday, but I got pretty wet coming back from the convention center at the end of the day. I wound up watching the Chinese New Year parade on TV and ordering a burger from room service.

Friday and Saturday were both good days at the con. I saw Bill Willingham on Friday. I haven’t been reading Fables, but I picked up the first trade at some point last year, and it’s in my reading pile. I picked up a couple more trades yesterday, at half-price, then ordered a few more from Amazon, so I’ll have the first six volumes to read.

I picked up the first four trades of Robert Kirkman’s Invincible series at half-price yesterday too. That’s another series I’ve been meaning to read, but just haven’t gotten around to.

I saw JMS at a few panels: his spotlight panel, a writing panel, and one of the DC panels. He’s involved in some pretty cool stuff right now. He’s got several film projects going on, including the film version of World War Z, which sounds like it ought to be fun. On the comics front, he said that he’d continue doing some work for Marvel, but he’s no longer exclusive to them, and he’ll now be working for DC also. He didn’t say what he’d be working on at DC though. And he said he’s got a couple of creator-owned projects in the works that will be published by Image. All good stuff. It sounds like there’s a possibility of more Babylon 5 DVD projects, given the sales on the Lost Tales DVD, so that’s also good news.

more Kindle stuff

I just noticed a post by Tim O’Reilly on the Kindle over at Radar. He talks a bit about the possibility of getting O’Reilly books out on the Kindle. In one of the comments, something interesting is mentioned: The Kindle has no monospaced font! That’s really a big problem, when you start getting into code samples in programming books. Oh well, yet another obstacle keeping me from the Holy Grail of tossing all my 1500-page programming books and replacing them with e-book equivalents.

inbox zero again

I got my inbox back to zero again today. This is probably because a lot of people took today off, so it was pretty quiet at work. I managed to go through a bunch of unprocessed stuff and sort some of it out into projects & actions. The roads were nice and clear today too, and the parking lot was fairly empty. Overall, a nice day for getting things done.