Title: Uther
Author: Jack Whyte
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
Publisher: Tor
Copyright: 2001
ISBN: 0812571029
Pages: 916
Keywords: historical, fantasy
Reading period: 13-28 January, 2007

This is the seventh volume of the Camulod Chronicles, Jack Whyte's sprawling retelling of the Arthurian legend. Whyte is consumed by the backstory of the legend, so much so that the sixth book The Sorceror Metamorphosis ends with young Arthur drawing Excalibur from a stone. The first two books, The Skystone and The Singing Sword, tell of the founding of the Colony of Camulod by two far-sighted Romano-Britons, Caius Britannicus and his brother-in-law Publius Varrus, who foresee the collapse of the Roman Empire. The third book, The Eagles' Brood, tells of their grandsons, Caius Merlyn Britannicus and Uther Pendragon. Narrated by Merlyn, that book shows them growing up as inseparable friends, who fall out in adulthood. The next three books, The Saxon Shore, The Fort at River's Bend, and The Sorceror Metamorphosis, detail Merlyn's efforts to raise Arthur from infancy to adulthood, largely in secrecy.

This book, Uther, is a parallel novel to The Eagles' Brood, told from the perspective of Uther, shedding light on the more mysterious events of the earlier book. It is sufficiently different from the earlier book that it stands in its own right. Uther is the king of the Celtic people of Cambria, though he spends much of his childhood at his cousin's home in Camulod. Much of the book concerns Uther's long war with Lot, king of Cornwall, and Uther's secret relationship with Ygraine, Lot's queen, and the mother of Arthur. Merlyn is a secondary character.

Whyte's tendency to towards longwindedness has grown worse as the series advances, and this book would have benefited from a firm-handed editor.

Moderately enjoyable, but recommended mainly for completists who have read the rest of the series.

I recently learned about string pods and chain pods. In essence, they are pocket-sized monopods. You screw a six-foot string into the tripod socket of your camera, step on the other end of the string, and pull it taut. The tension on the string reduces camera shake.

My string pod tutorial shows how I made the string pod, as well as some before and after shots.

Before now, I used to try to find a handy surface or wall to brace the camera, when taking photos without flash. Often there isn't such a surface. I have a little 3-inch pocket tripod that I carry with me all the time, but I haven't used it much.

A Flick thread on low-light, no flash, hand-held photography makes several good suggestions. The best is to set the 2-second timer, which gives the camera a chance to stabilize after pressing the trigger.

Culture Shock

When I reviewed The Wrong Kind of Blood, I adverted to the culture shock that I experience whenever I visit Ireland.

The Ireland that I left eighteen years ago this week was emerging from decades of social repression at the hands of the Catholic Church. Contraceptives were illegal until 1979 and when first introduced, could only be obtained by prescription from a pharmacy. The prescription requirement was dropped in 1985, and other restrictions were lifted in the Nineties, so that they're now sold by dispensing machines in many pubs.

Homosexuality was criminalized by the same Victorian laws that sent Oscar Wilde to Reading Gaol for two years. The laws were seldom enforced, but most gay people were closeted. Those laws were repealed about fifteen years ago, leading to a more open gay community. Same-sex marriage has been proposed, though it has been turned down for now.

Abortion is still illegal. There were huge debates about it in the Eighties, mostly regarding a successful constitutional amendment to make it even more illegal.

The Catholic Church still plays an important role in the lives of older people, but for many of my generation and younger, the only time they see the inside of a church is for hatches, matches, and dispatches.

I still remember how upset my mother was twenty years ago, when one of my unmarried cousins became pregnant. Now, one in three children are born outside of marriage.

The Church is increasingly being seen as irrelevant. The Irish Church, like the American Church, acquitted itself very badly in the matter of paedophile priests.

There's less and less of the backward, priest-ridden country that Joyce and others railed against.

(The moralistic Presbyterians who controlled Northern Ireland were, if anything, even more oppressive than the Catholic Church in the Republic.)

It is the economic changes of the Celtic Tiger that are more immediately obvious to the visitor.

Glimmers of economic hope were appearing after joining the European Economic Community (now known as the European Union) in 1973. But unemployment was high throughout the Eighties: nearly 20% nationwide; much higher in deprived areas.

Emigration had been the safety valve for decades. 80% of the generation born between 1930 and 1940 emigrated. Eighty percent! The Forties and the Fifties were particularly hard in Ireland, then entrenched in benighted economic isolationism.

Now the country is awash with money. The property market spirals ever upward, scaling new heights of insanity. Nondescript houses in the right parts of Dublin go for millions of Euros. It is all but impossible to buy one's first house. Middle-aged parents are remortgaging their paid-off houses, to lend their adult children enough to make a downpayment.

Former emigrants have returned. Once homogeneous, the country is now awash in immigrants from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. Supermarkets now have a special section stocking Polish food!

While we were in Ireland in November, we saw John Boorman's dark new film, The Tiger's Tail, which addresses many of the problems that the new wealth has brought. Greed and corruption were always present in Irish society, but the scale is much worse. The disparity between rich and poor is growing to US levels.

The Irish Language

Last week, my friend Eric sent me a pointer to a blog post at Languagehat which linked to an an article in the Grauniad by a native Irish speaker, Manchán Magan, who set off on a trip around Ireland with one self-imposed handicap, not to speak a word of English.

Despite 25% of the population claiming that they can speak Irish, in practice, it's closer to 3%. Magan encountered great difficulty in finding people who would even attempt to respond to him in Dublin, and not much better elsewhere. He ends on a somewhat hopeful note, having encountered some children speaking a fluent, modern dialect of Irish; children who attend the Gaelscoileanna, the all-Irish schools that are increasing in number everywhere.

We Irish call the language of our ancestors "Irish", not "Gaelic". The Irish name for the Irish language is Gaeilge.

The Irish language was long associated with rebellious nationalists, and the British came close to killing off the Irish language in the nineteenth century, helped along by the disproportionate effects of the Famine and emigration upon the Irish-speaking regions.

Once the Irish Free State (later the Republic) achieved independence in the 1920s, the teaching of Irish became compulsory in Irish schools. All applicants to public sector jobs were supposed to be proficient in Irish. Irish became the official first language, with English relegated to second place.

You might think that this would lead to a revival of Irish. Not so. The Wikipedia article on the Irish language quotes the author of a comprehensive survey on the state of the language:

'It is an absolute indictment of successive Irish Governments that at the foundation of the Irish State there were 250,000 fluent Irish speakers living in Irish-speaking or semi Irish-speaking areas, but the number now is between 20,000 and 30,000.'

The Wikipedia article goes into more details.

From my perspective, the main problems were the appalling way that Irish was taught and the lip service paid to the notion of reviving Irish.

Most Irish people of my generation left school after 14 years of having this difficult language shoved down their throats by the Irish Taliban, the humorless old fuckers with misty-eyed dreams of maidens dancing at crossroads. It was all stick, no carrot. Little effort was made to engage people, to make them enjoy the language. Instead, it was taught in a dry, academic fashion, placing more emphasis on the analysis of tedious poems than on conversation.

The Israelis managed to revive Hebrew, turning it into a modern language spoken by seven million people. The Irish have nearly killed off Gaeilge.

[The title of this post, Ta Fuck-All Gaeilge Agam, is a pun. Tá focal Gaeilge agam (Taw fuc'l Gayl-guh ah-gum) means "I have a word of Irish" or, less obliquely, "I speak Irish." The cúpla focal (couple of words) are the handful of Irish phrases that Irish people are wont to toss into their speech. I did leave school with a modest grasp of Irish, but not nearly as good as my French or my German.]

Title: The Wrong Kind of Blood
Author: Declan Hughes
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: William Morrow
Copyright: 2006
ISBN: 0060825464
Pages: 312
Keywords: mystery
Reading period: 12-13 January, 2007

Ed Loy has returned to Dublin after 20 years in Los Angeles to bury his mother. An old friend asks him to find her missing husband. This sends him into a viper's nest of corruption among property developers and upwardly mobile gangsters, as he confronts the demons of his past.

Loy, after his long, self-imposed exile, finds a very different Dublin to the one that he left. The economic miracle known as the Celtic Tiger has wrought huge changes over the last 15 years, catapulting Ireland from a country that haemorrhaged emigrants to having one of the highest living standards in the world. The less desirable consequences include out-of-control house prices, enormous traffic congestion, and a gap between rich and poor that rivals the United States'.

I emigrated from Ireland in 1989, so I experience some of Loy's culture shock whenever I visit Ireland.

Hughes has written a taut, effective hard-bitten detective novel, which casts a critical eye on modern Ireland. Ed Loy, in the best PI tradition, has a perverse streak, a little attitude problem, and a fondness for drink and women. Well-worn elements, but not often applied to the mean streets of Dublin's gated communities.

Batchfile Wrapper

I've made some significant changes to my Python Batchfile Wrapper. The main virtue of this wrapper is that it finds python.exe and invokes it on the associated Python script, ensuring that input redirection works.

I've also adapted py2bat to work with my wrapper. I'm calling my version py2cmd.

Here's my latest batch file, which is shorter than its predecessor.

To use it, place it in the same directory as the Python script you want to run and give it the same basename; i.e., d:\some\path or other\example.cmd will run d:\some\path or other\example.py.

 @echo off
 setlocal
 set PythonExe=
 set PythonExeFlags=-u

 for %%i in (cmd bat exe) do (
     for %%j in (python.%%i) do (
         call :SetPythonExe "%%~$PATH:j"
     )
 )
 for /f "tokens=2 delims==" %%i in ('assoc .py') do (
     for /f "tokens=2 delims==" %%j in ('ftype %%i') do (
         for /f "tokens=1" %%k in ("%%j") do (
             call :SetPythonExe %%k
         )
     )
 )
 "%PythonExe%" %PythonExeFlags% "%~dpn0.py" %*
 goto :EOF

 :SetPythonExe
 if not [%1]==[""] (
     if ["%PythonExe%"]==[""] (
         set PythonExe=%~1
     )
 )
 goto :EOF

This is sufficiently cryptic that it merits some explanation.

The first set of nested loops attempts to find python.cmd, python.bat, and python.exe, respectively, along your PATH:

 for %%i in (cmd bat exe) do (
     for %%j in (python.%%i) do (
         call :SetPythonExe "%%~$PATH:j"
     )
 )

The %%~$PATH:j expression searches the PATH for %%j (i.e., python.cmd, etc). If it's found, the expression evaluates to the full path to %%j. Otherwise, it evaluates to the empty string. I've bracketed the expression with double quotes in order to handle spaces in directory names.

The SetPythonExe subroutine simply sets %PythonExe% to %1 if and only if %PythonExe% doesn't already have a value and %1 is not empty:

We can't set %PythonExe% directly in the loop. As explained at for loops and variable expansion, environment variables in the body of the loop are evaluated once before the loop starts and won't change until after the loop terminates:

 :SetPythonExe
 if not [%1]==[""] (
     if ["%PythonExe%"]==[""] (
         set PythonExe=%~1
     )
 )
 goto :EOF

Note: the %~1 notation strips off any surrounding double quotes. (ss64.com has details on parameter syntax.)

The square brackets and double quotes are necessary to make it all work if either %PythonExe% or %1 contains spaces. Getting this right was one of the hardest parts of the whole exercise.

The second set of nested loops are scarier:

 for /f "tokens=2 delims==" %%i in ('assoc .py') do (
     for /f "tokens=2 delims==" %%j in ('ftype %%i') do (
         for /f "tokens=1" %%k in ("%%j") do (
             call :SetPythonExe %%k
         )
     )
 )

The outer loop runs once: assoc .py yields .py=Python.File and %%i is set to Python.File. Running ftype Python.File yields Python.File="C:\Python24\python.exe" "%1" %* (on my machine).

The second loop also runs once: %%j is set to everything on the right-hand side of the =.

The third loop also runs once: %%k is set to the first token in %%j, "C:\Python24\python.exe", which is passed in to SetPythonExe.

At this point, %PythonExe% will have a value if python.cmd (or python.bat or python.exe) existed on your path, or the .py extension was registered.

If it doesn't have a value, then the invocation of "%PythonExe%" will fail, setting %errorlevel% to 9009:

 "%PythonExe%" %PythonExeFlags% "%~dpn0.py" %*
 goto :EOF

%PythonExeFlags% was set to -u at the beginning of the script. As explained in my Python Batchfile Wrapper post, this treats stdin, stdout, and stderr as raw streams, instead of transliterating \r\n into \n. If you want cooked input, simply remove the -u.

The "%~dpn0.py" notation yields the absolute path to the Python script with the .py extension sitting beside this batch file: another example of parameter syntax.

Finally, goto :EOF ends execution of the batchfile, skipping the :SetPythonExe subroutine.

Whew!

py2cmd

You can have a batchfile sitting alongside a Python script as above, or you can have a self-contained batchfile cum Python script.

py2bat has been kicking around for years. It takes a Python script and turns it into a batchfile, by relying on a couple of tricks.

I've adapted py2bat into a new script, py2cmd. In essence, the generated batchfile looks like this:

 @echo off
 REM="""
 ... set PythonExe as above ...
 "%PythonExe%" -x %0
 goto :EOF
 """

 # python code starts here
 # ...

When this file is executed by cmd.exe, the control flow should be obvious. Disable echoing to the screen, a funny-looking REM, set %PythonExe% as before (not shown), invoke python.exe with the -x flag on the current batchfile, and finally skip past the rest of the file.

When Python is invoked with the -x flag, it skips the first line of the script (@echo off). The second line sets the variable REM to the multiline string which continues down to the closing """ below the goto :EOF. Everything after that is the original Python script. All the batchfile nonsense is wrapped up inside the REM variable.

Download py2cmd.

Other Wrappers

Fredrik Lundh's ExeMaker generates a stub executable to launch a Python script with the same basename. It requires that Python already be installed on the target machine. I couldn't get ExeMaker to work properly. The stub executable leaves me at the Python interpreter's interactive prompt.

py2exe takes a Python script and bundles up all the Python support files to make it run on a machine that doesn't have Python installed. Works fine for me, but you get 4MB+ of associated runtime. Massive overkill if the target machine is known to have Python installed.

Keith Olbermann was on fire tonight, condemning the insanity of escalating a lost war that the American public so clearly wants no more of.

Only this president could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834 wounded in Iraq, and finally say, “Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me” — only to follow that by proposing to repeat the identical mistake ... in Iran.

... 

And yet — without any authorization from the public, which spoke so loudly and clearly to you in November’s elections — without any consultation with a Congress (in which key members of your own party, including Sens. Sam Brownback, Norm Coleman and Chuck Hagel, are fleeing for higher ground) — without any awareness that you are doing exactly the opposite of what Baker-Hamilton urged you to do — you seem to be ready to make an open-ended commitment (on America’s behalf) to do whatever you want, in Iran.

... 

The lives of 21,500 more Americans endangered, to give “breathing space” to a government that just turned the first and perhaps the most sober act of any democracy — the capital punishment of an ousted dictator — into a vengeance lynching so barbaric and so lacking in the solemnities necessary for credible authority, that it might have offended the Ku Klux Klan of the 19th century.

... 

Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said nation-building was wrong for America.

Now he says it is vital.

He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control.

Last night he promised to embed them in Iraqi units.

He told us about WMD.

Mobile labs.

Secret sources.

Aluminum tubes.

Yellow-cake.

He has told us the war is necessary:

Because Saddam was a material threat.

Because of 9/11.

Because of Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaida. Terrorism in general.

To liberate Iraq. To spread freedom. To spread Democracy. To prevent terrorism by gas price increases.

Because this was a guy who tried to kill his dad.

Because — 439 words in to the speech last night — he trotted out 9/11 again.

In advocating and prosecuting this war he passed on a chance to get Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.

To get Muqtada Al-Sadr. To get Bin Laden.

He sent in fewer troops than the generals told him to. He ordered the Iraqi army disbanded and the Iraqi government “de-Baathified.”

He short-changed Iraqi training. He neglected to plan for widespread looting. He did not anticipate sectarian violence.

He sent in troops without life-saving equipment. He gave jobs to foreign contractors, and not Iraqis. He staffed U.S. positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.

He and his government told us: America had prevailed, mission accomplished, the resistance was in its last throes.

He has insisted more troops were not necessary. He has now insisted more troops are necessary.

He has insisted it’s up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would not be necessary.

He has trumpeted the turning points:

The fall of Baghdad, the death of Uday and Qusay, the capture of Saddam. A provisional government, a charter, a constitution, the trial of Saddam. Elections, purple fingers, another government, the death of Saddam.

He has assured us: We would be greeted as liberators — with flowers;

As they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course; we were never about “stay the course.”

We would never have to go door-to-door in Baghdad. And, last night, that to gain Iraqis’ trust, we would go door-to-door in Baghdad.

He told us the enemy was al-Qaida, foreign fighters, terrorists, Baathists, and now Iran and Syria.

He told us the war would pay for itself. It would cost $1.7 billion. $100 billion. $400 billion. Half a trillion. Last night’s speech alone cost another $6 billion.

And after all of that, now it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Democrats, Republicans, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November and the majority of the American people.

Oh, and one more to add, tonight: Oceania has always been at war with East Asia.

Mr. Bush, this is madness.

You have lost the military. You have lost the Congress to the Democrats. You have lost most of the Iraqis. You have lost many of the Republicans. You have lost our allies.

You are losing the credibility, not just of your presidency, but more importantly of the office itself.

And most imperatively, you are guaranteeing that more American troops will be losing their lives, and more families their loved ones. You are guaranteeing it!

This becomes your legacy, sir: How many of those you addressed last night as your “fellow citizens” you just sent to their deaths.

And for what, Mr. Bush?

So the next president has to pull the survivors out of Iraq instead of you?

Bush sent troops into an Iranian consulate in Iraq last night, invading the sovereign territory of Iran. Is he trying to provoke Iran into a war too? How does he propose to fight it? Is he trying to bring on the end times?

Feh!

Title: Pushing Ice
Author: Alastair Reynolds
Rating: 4 stars out of 5
Publisher: Ace
Copyright: 2006
ISBN: 0441014011
Pages: 464
Keywords: speculative fiction
Reading period: 4-9 January, 2007

Fifty years hence, Janus, one of the moons of Saturn, suddenly leaves its orbit and starts heading for Spica, 260 light years away. Only the mining ship Rockhopper can intercept what is now apparent as a long-dormant alien artifact and learn something about it. Things go wrong and the ship crash lands on Janus, as it heads towards Spica at near-relativistic speed. The crew splits into factions led by the captain, Bella Lind, and the chief engineer, Svetlana Barseghian, once the best of friends, now implacable enemies.

Reynolds tells an exciting tale of big ideas, hard science, and clashing personalities.

Recommended.

I gave a speech at Freely Speaking Toastmasters this evening, on Mind Mapping. You can see a shrunken version of the mind map for the speech above. Clicking on it will lead to the full-sized image.

I created the mind map with Freemind. Here's the speech mindmap as a Freemind document.

I thought the speech went quite well. It was speech #8, working with visual aids. I drew a partial version of my speech's mind map on a white board ahead of time, and drew a couple of mind maps on a flip chart during the speech. The second one was a two-minute brainstorming session on increasing club membership.

I had intended to record the speech and turn it into a podcast, but I forgot.

Usually, I write out the words of the speech ahead of time, rehearse it several times, fine-tuning the words, and then deliver the speech from a handful of notes.

This time, I never wrote down anything except the mind map itself. I did have a printout of the map in front of me, though I didn't refer to it often.

This recipe comes from my mother, who has used it for many years.

Fruit-based Christmas cake is considered a treat in Ireland, not a thing of horror, as so many Americans regard it.

Makes 9" round cake in a 3" tall cake pan.

Note: For the raisins, you can substitute stoned muscat raisins or valentias if you wish. Be careful to only take the stone and leave the flesh. I usually cut them in half as they are big.

Soak all fruit overnight in some whiskey (approx half cup) or brandy. Stir and cover.

Line tin with buttered greaseproof paper (two layers) on sides and bottom. Must be 3" taller than tin. Put brown paper around outside to prevent burning: prevents base being burned.

Cream butter and sugar very well: about 10 mins in a beater. Whip eggs together and sieve flour. Gradually add eggs slowly and alternate with some flour (it might be better to do this by hand to prevent curdling). Add rest of dry ingredients. Lastly add soaked fruit. Stir and pour into lined tin.

Before putting into oven, make a 3" wide scoop in centre of top; glaze cake with some milk to prevent cracking. Cake takes approx four hours to cook. If getting too brown, put some paper on top for last half hour. Don't open oven before that.

Cook on 2nd shelf from the bottom. My oven in Dublin I cook at 300F for 1 1/2 hours and reduce to 250F for 2 1/2 hours.

While still warm, pierce top several times and pour in a little whiskey. Leave in tin overnight.

The cake may be made several months ahead of time. Keep in an airtight container. Every few weeks, drizzle a little whiskey on it to keep it moist.

In mid-December, the cake should be covered with a layer of marzipan icing. It should then be decorated with a layer of royal icing.

Update: 2008/03/31: Emma posted several blog posts about the Christmas Cake that I made in 2007: making the cake, making marzipan, and icing the cake.

Title: Quicksilver: The Baroque Cycle, Vol. 1

Author: Neal Stephenson

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

Publisher: William Morrow

Copyright: 2003

ISBN: 0380977427

Pages: 927

Keywords: historical fiction

Reading period: 10 December 2006–4 January, 2007

The first of three equally long volumes of historical fiction by Neal Stephenson, who is better known for his speculative fiction. This is a prequel of sorts to Cryptonomicon, featuring the distant ancestors of the Waterhouse and Shaftoe characters.

Quicksilver primarily takes place in late 17th century Europe, the baroque era where giants such as Newton, Leibniz, Hooke, and Huygens brought about a new understanding of the world. Daniel Waterhouse, a Puritan scholar, moves among them, knowing that he is not a good enough Natural Philosopher to be their equal, while he also moves through the courts of King Charles II and James II. Jack Shaftoe, who styles himself the King of the Vagabonds, moves in far less reputable circles. The two men do not meet, but they are both tied to the remarkable Eliza, who rises from being a Turkish harem slave to becoming both a French countess and a Dutch duchess, by working as a double agent for the Dutch against the French.

It's an engaging tale, conveying a good deal of the intellectual and political ferment of the times. However, both Daniel and Eliza seem anachronistic to me, like characters transplanted from the twentieth century. Stephenson works in a variety of styles ranging from straight narrative, to short plays, to long epistolatory chapters. He throws in other anachronistic touches too, such as Leibniz referring to the growing incidence of 'canal rage' amongst the gondoliers of Venice.

At 900 pages, it's far too long. Stephenson's editor should have reined him in. I would have enjoyed it more at half the length.