I rode Seattle's new Light Rail system for the first time yesterday morning. I walked to the new Beacon Hill station. It took me just over 20 minutes at a brisk pace, so I'm not likely to walk there often. I could have taken the 60 bus to the station, but it only runs every 30 minutes.

When I got to the Beacon Hill station, I couldn't figure out if my book of $2.00 tickets for Metro bus tickets were valid on the train or not. The first three workers I asked didn't know either. The cop I asked said “yes”, so I took the elevator 167 feet down to the platform and rode the train into the Pioneer Square station next to the Smith Tower. After looking on the Sound Transit website, I don't think the cop was right.

I'm not the only one who's confused either. Seems like everyone else is confused too. Bus transfer tickets work, at least, and light rail tickets are accepted as transfers on the bus. Unlike the buses, there's no ride-free zone for the light rail in downtown Seattle.

We took the light rail home from the Mariners game last night and transferred to the 36 bus after a short wait. (The 36 runs down 15th after 7pm; the 60 and the 39 stop running about 9pm.)

I found the trains and the Beacon Hill station to be clean and pleasant. The train reportedly runs every 7½ minutes, which I haven't confirmed. It certainly travels faster than the bus.

The light rail seems nice, but I'm not likely to use it often.

Tonight was the annual Irish Night at the Mariners and we bought tickets for $11.

Even after 20 years in the States, I still know next to nothing about baseball. I picked up a copy of the Baseball Field Guide before last year's Irish Night, and found the first chapter very helpful in explaining the basics. I re-read it last night and it helped me follow tonight's game.

Neither the Mariners nor the White Sox could score a run. Inning after inning the game went on, zero-zero. No one had scored by the bottom of the ninth, so play continued. A tenth inning. An eleventh. We called it a night and took the new Light Rail to Beacon Hill.

The game finished in the 14th inning when the Mariners finally pulled ahead.

Title: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Author: Stieg Larsson

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Vintage Crime

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 0307454541

Pages: 590

Keywords: mystery

Reading period: 8–9 August, 2009

After crusading financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist is convicted of libel, he reluctantly agrees to investigate the 40-year-old disappearance of the teenaged Harriet Vanger for her great-uncle Henrik, a rich industrialist. He is aided by the antisocial hacker Lisabeth Salander, the eponymous tattooed girl.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was published shortly before Larsson's untimely death, and later became an international bestseller. It's a classic locked-room mystery—Harriet disappeared from a sealed-off island full of the extended, ugly Vanger clan. It's an indictment of the Nazism buried not so deeply in Sweden's past, of sexual violence and misogyny, and of the ethical failings and complicity of financial journalists. It's a dark thriller where Blomkvist and Sanger are hunted by a sadistic killer. It's a Ludlumesque technothriller where Sanger “stings” a rich crook. It's a character study of a disturbed and brilliant young woman.

It's a bit too much really: there are too many things going on. But it is quite entertaining.

Title: Torchwood: Children of Earth

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Copyright: 2009

Torchwood began as a more adult spinoff of Doctor Who, but came into its own right in its third season, the five-part mini-series, Children of Earth.

One day, all the children of Earth freeze up and announce, “we are coming” over and over, before carrying on unawares. The aliens known as the 456 are announcing themselves. What soon becomes apparent to the audience is that the British government had dealings once before with the 456 back in 1965—and they don't want it to be known. They attempt to destroy the Torchwood team, blowing up the immortal Captain Jack Harkness, to keep them silent. The 456, it turns out, were given a dozen children in 1965 and have come back to take 10% of all the children of Earth.

It's a powerful tale, where bad decision after bad decision threatens to topple humanity into the abyss. Two actors deliver noteworthy performances, John Barrowman as Jack and Peter Capaldi as John Frobisher, a senior civil servant. Jack cannot die and he can barely live with himself after he betrays several trusts. Frobisher is a man who's worked hard all of his life, only to discover that his masters consider him an expendable pawn. Some of the minor characters keep the story rooted in the human experience, saving it from technobabble, and shed light on the main characters' backstories.

Highly recommended.

Title: Shadowfall

Author: James Clemens

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Publisher: Roc

Copyright: 2005

ISBN: 0451460502

Pages: 507

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 4–8 August, 2009

For four thousand years, the gods have dwelt in human form amongst the people of Myrillia, rooted to the very land. When the goddess Meeryn is found murdered and the disgraced Shadowknight Tylar de Noche is found at her side, miraculously healed of his maiming, he is accused of being the godslayer. He escapes and uncovers a dark conspiracy of corruption and evil.

As an exercise in world building, this book succeeds. For example, the gods' humors—blood, seed, menses, sweat, tears, saliva, phlegm, and yellow bile and black bile (“piss and shite”)—are collected by their acolytes, since they contain the much-treasured Grace, the blessings of the gods. The writing, however, is clumsy and the plot, pedestrian.

Mildly enjoyable.

Title: Winterbirth

Author: Brian Ruckley

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Orbit

Copyright: 2006

ISBN: 0316068063

Pages: 654

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 3–4 August, 2009

A century and a half ago, the believers in the Black Road were forced into exile. Now, in some bloody surprise attacks, they've conquered the Glas Valley. The story is largely told from the viewpoints of three brother-sister pairs: the young leaders of the Black Road attackers; the adolescent nephew and niece of the thane of the Lannis-Haig Blood; and a warrior of the Kyrinin race and his sister. Each side believes that it is in the right: the clash between two human cultures was inevitable, as is the war between the Kyrinin tribes.

A strong debut. Lots of swords, a little sorcery.

Title: Thunderer

Author: Felix Gilman

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Bantam Spectra

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 055359110X

Pages: 527

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 27 July–2 August, 2009

Ararat is vast, unknowable, unmappable, home to many living gods who make their presence felt. Arjun comes from his far-distant home, seeking the Voice, the god that abandoned his people. He arrives as the Bird sweeps through the great city, transforming it by its passage, only to be captured in the warship Thunderer. A boy, Jack, also captures part of the Bird's power as he flees the workhouse.

Gilman has created a city reminiscent of China Miéville's New Crubuzon, a vast baroque tapestry of neighborhoods, ruled by heavy-handed oligarchs squabbling to enlarge their fiefdoms. Miéville is a better writer, but this is a fine debut novel from Felix Gilman.

Title: Careless in Red

Author: Elizabeth George

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Harper

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0061160903

Pages: 725

Keywords: fiction, mystery

Reading period: 26–27 July, 2009

Out of his mind with grief after the senseless murder of his wife Helen in What Came Before He Shot Her, Detective Superintendent Tommy Lynley has been walking along the Cornish coastline for weeks when he stumbles across a dead body. Reluctantly, he becomes part of the police investigation. Half the village seems to have a motive for killing the victim. Old slights and recent fights have festered, pitting family members against each other.

Elizabeth George is noted for the depth of her characterization. Even the supporting characters are well-drawn, complex individuals. But they're almost uniformly grim and unpleasant people who make bad choices. Aside from the late Helen Lynley, there are few light-hearted cheerful people in George's books, which can make her books heavy going.

Recommended.

This may, perhaps, be old news in bear circles, but I only read it ten days ago on the plane over, in Robert Hughes' quirky Barcelona the Great Enchantress. The founder of Catalunyan/Catalonian/Catalan national independence a thousand years' ago was the Visigoth known as Wilfred the Hairy. History does not record with any clarity how Guifré el Pilós earned that name.

I haven't visited the Iberian peninsula since the 1970s when the well-founded stereotype was that Spanish men had mustaches. That seems to have gone out of style: almost all men, young or old, were cleanshaven. And after having seen countless women wearing tanktops in the heat, I can say that the stereotype about unshaven armpits is equally dated.

The enervating heat aside (high 30Cs = high 90Fs), Barcelona, the Pyrenees, and Figueres (Dali's hometown) were all most enjoyable.

Title: Ink and Steel

Author: Elizabeth Bear

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

Publisher: Roc

Copyright: 2008

ISBN: 0451462793

Pages: 441

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 20–25 July, 2009

The Prometheans are a secret society sworn to protect England and Elizabeth I. Kit Marley (Christopher Marlowe), playmaker, poet, and intelligencer, has been killed by a dagger in the eye, at the behest of a rogue faction in the Prometheans. Another talented polemicist is required and Will Shakespeare is recruited. But Kit is not dead. He has been spirited to Faerie, where now he must serve their two queens. He becomes the lover of one, Morgan le Fay, and her son, Murchaud. Kit can return to the land of the living, but only briefly. Meanwhile, Will is drawn ever deeper into a web of intrigue.

Bear brings the Elizabethan era to life and builds plausible personalities for two great dramatists about whom we know little. And it's a rare pleasure to read a novel where the protagonist is a male bisexual. The complex plot is confusing at times and the Elizabethan dialog is betimes tiresome.

For a' that, 'tis well done.

Title: Barcelona the Great Enchantress

Author: Robert Hughes

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: National Geographic Directions

Copyright: 2004

ISBN: 1426201311

Pages: 169

Keywords: history, autobiography

Reading period: 15–24 July, 2009

Robert Hughes has been in love with Barcelona and its people for four decades. This book—part selective history, part memoir—is adapted from a much larger, earlier book about Barcelona. Hughes is a partisan of Catalan culture and food. He brings us from its Roman origins as Barcino, Catalunya's founding as an independent nation a thousand years ago by the Visigoth Wilfred the Hairy, up through the Olympics in 1992. This is no comprehensive survey: he spends more time on submarine inventor Monturiol than on the Spanish Civil War.

Well-written and opinionated, if overly selective.

Title: The Name of the Wind

Author: Patrick Rothfuss

Rating: 4.5 stars out of 5

Publisher: Daw

Copyright: 2007

ISBN: 0756404746

Pages: 722

Keywords: fantasy

Reading period: 15–19 July, 2009

Kvothe—the infamous, legendary Kvothe—has been living under an assumed name when the Chronicler tracks him down and asks him for his life story. Kvothe relates the story of his early years: his precocious talents for music and arcanism (magic); the happy childhood that ends when his parents and their troupe are murdered by an ancient evil; his years as a feral street child; and his early entrance into the University to study the Arcanum, where his brilliance makes him a star and his recklessness brings him much grief.

Discursive and entertaining. Despite the superficial similarities to Harry Potter, this is an adult tale, full of depth and complexity.

My eight-month experiment in daily blogging will go on hiatus for a few days. We fly out tonight and I will have only intermittent Internet access for the next three weeks in Spain and Ireland.

It's possible that I'll write a daily post, but I often won't be able to post immediately.

We're off to Spain and Ireland tomorrow evening, so lots of last-minute preparations tonight. I laid out my clothes on the spare bed on Sunday; Emma picked out hers this evening. I've just paid some bills and I'm transferring files onto the netbook that I'm bringing.

I still have to whittle down the large pile of books that are under consideration. I don't want to run out before we get to Ireland, but I don't want to take too many. Depending on what else is going on, I'll get through a book in a day or two when I'm on vacation. Maybe two books on those long plane flights.

I mentioned three weeks ago that I was putting together a group of people to see Greenstage's production of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors at the Seward Park Amphitheater. Six of us braved the rain last night, ate our picnic, and enjoyed an hour and a half of ribald slapstick.

Almost all of the cast cross-dressed. The main male parts, the two sets of identical twin brothers, were played by women, The wife, her sister, and the courtesan were played by ugly men in the best panto dame tradition.

The play, like so many of Shakespeare's comedies, requires an endless series of confused identities, which could be cleared up in moments if only someone paused and said, “Wait a minute!”

Much running around, no subtlety, fun.

Lots of photos at Flickr.

Seattle Shakespeare are also putting on free, outdoor productions of Shakespearean plays, Taming of the Shrew and Richard III. Both end on August 2nd, before we get back from Europe. Cathy saw their white trash production Taming yesterday and raved about it today.

For weeks, Lyn has been telling us about the musical talk that he was going to give today at his UU congregation about Billy Strayhorn, a little-known but talented composer, who collaborated for decades with Duke Ellington. Strayhorn was openly gay in the homophobic decades before Stonewall. That, coupled with his apparent liking for remaining in Ellington's shadow, probably contributed to his obscurity.

Lyn talked about Billy Strayhorn and his life and music for half an hour. He also accompanied Shirley singing some Strayhorn songs on piano, as Linda and Marion played the clarinet and cello. He said that Strayhorn's life gives rise to two questions, Do you know who you really are, and Are you living as that person.

He had been fretting about it beforehand, but it all came out fine.

Two picnics this weekend.

Today we held the tenth annual BiNet Seattle picnic for the bisexual community, which I once again organized, with some help from Emma. Almost all of the preceding ones were held at Ravenna Park. Even though I booked the picnic back in March, Ravenna Park was unavailable this weekend, which was the only weekend that really suited me. We went to Golden Gardens Beach instead. It's a nice park, but parking is atrocious on a busy weekend, which may explain the poor turnout. There were only 10 people, down from 20–30 for the last few years. Three new faces; the rest were regulars. As usual, Emma and I brought the meat, charcoal, plates, and tools, and did the cooking.

Tomorrow's picnic will be before the open-air production of Comedy of Errors at the Seward Park Amphitheater. This one's easy: no-one's cooking. We're just bringing food that's ready to eat.

I mentioned three weeks ago that I had just repaved my work dev box and installed the 64-bit version of the Windows 7 RC. Nine or ten years after I first ported parts of IIS to Win64, I am finally running my main desktop on 64-bit Windows. With one exception, it's been painless. Programs have just worked, devices have just worked. There are relatively few native x64 applications, but for the most part it doesn't matter. The cases where it does matter—e.g., shell extensions such as TortoiseSVN—are available as 64-bit binaries.

I briefly flirted with using the 64-bit build of Python, but realized that I would have to recompile several eggs as 64-bit binaries. That was too painful and the 32-bit binary did everything I needed.

Building in Visual Studio 2005 is noticeably faster. I'm not sure how much of it was due to accumulated cruft after 18 months on Vista, but builds there were very slow.

The one exception was a major problem for the first week and a half. Whenever I ran our ASP.NET web application, it would go berserk, eat up all 4GB of my physical RAM, push the working set of IIS's w3wp.exe to 12GB, and max out one of my 4 cores! The only way to maintain any sanity was to run iisreset every 20 minutes to gently kill the process.

WinDbg and Process Explorer showed that the rogue thread was stuck in a loop in mscorjit!LifetimesListInteriorBlocksHelperIterative. I passed a minidump on to my former colleagues in IIS, who sent it to the CLR team. They said:

The only thing I can tell is that it is Regex, and some regex expression compiled down to a method with 456KB of IL. That is huge, and yes 12GB of RAM consumed for something like that is expected.

With that clue, I was able to track down the problem, a particularly foul regex, built from a 10KB string, with 32 alternating expressions, each of which contains dozens of alternated subexpressions. The string is built from many smaller strings, so it's not obvious in the source just how ugly it is. I commented out the new Regex() and my problems went away.

Regardless of how ugly the regex is, this is a major regression in the CLR. This code has been working without blatant problems for two years on the 32-bit flavors of XP, Server 2003, Vista, and Server 2008. I've been meaning to try this code on 32-bit Windows 7, but have been too busy.

(The original, long-gone author was apparently aware that the regex is expensive to create because he runs a background thread to new the regex, which should have told him something. We'll fix the code that uses the regex to do something saner, soon.)

All that aside, I've been happy with the 64-bit version of Windows 7.