Auxiliary Memory

2009 Year in Reading

Reviewing the books I read in 2009 is very psychologically revealing, and disappointing in many ways. I had a richer reading year in 2008.

Favorite Fiction:

The Naked Sun – Isaac Asimov
The Time Machine – H. G. Wells
Orphans in the Sky – Robert A. Heinlein
Dracula – Bram Stoker

Favorite Non-Fiction:

The First Three Minutes – Stephen Weinberg
Why Women Have Sex – Cindy M. Meston and David M. Buss
The Evolution of God – Robert Wright
The Beatles – Bob Spitz

The Whole List:

Farnham’s Freehold – Robert A. Heinlein (3rd time)
Hyperion – Dan Simmons (2nd time)
From Here to Eternity – Modern Scholar audiobook about science fiction
Bellwether – Connie Willis (2nd time)
The Green Hills of Earth – Robert A. Heinlein (2nd time)
The Naked Sun – Isaac Asimov (2nd time)
Roadmarks – Roger Zelazny
More Than Human – Theodore Sturgeon (2nd time)
The Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union – Michael Chabon
The Byrds (4th edition) – Johnny Rogan
The Canon – Natalie Angier
Dune – Frank Herbert (2nd time)
Bet Me – Jennifer Cruise
Variable Star – Robert A. Heinlein (2nd time)
To Your Scattered Bodies Go – Philip Jose Farmer (2nd time)
The Sirens of Titan – Kurt Vonnegut (2nd time)
The Time Machine – H. G. Wells (3rd time)
The War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells (2nd time)
The Fall of Hyperion – Dan Simmons
The Greatest Minds and Ideas of All Time – Will Durant
Persuasion – Jane Austin
Mayflower – Nathaniel Philbrick
The First Three Minutes – Stephen Weinberg
Dracula – Bram Stoker
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
The Very First Light – John C. Mather & John Boslough
The Beatles – Bob Spitz (abridged audio)
The Year’s Ten Top Tales of SF – ed. Allan Kaster
Replay – Ken Grimwood (3rd time)
The Evolution of God – Robert Wright
The Black Swan – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Ringworld – Larry Niven (2nd time)
Magnificent Desolation – Buzz Aldrin
The Good Solder – Ford Maddox Ford
Orphans of the Sky – Robert A. Heinlein (3rd time)
The Man Who Was Thursday – G. K. Chesterton
Flood – Stephen Baxter
Why Women Have Sex – Cindy M. Meston and David M. Buss

It’s pretty obvious this year I’m reliving my reading past. I’m in two online book clubs devoted to classic science fiction and that’s dominating my selection of books. My favorite science fiction book of the year in terms of pure entertainment was The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov. Dune was very impressive, a true masterpiece, but I didn’t connect with it emotionally. On the other hand I was dazzled by the imaginative speculation in Orphans of the Sky. Most of the other SF books were page turning fun, but ultimately not that innovative.

Overall, my reevaluation of classic science fiction has been disappointing. Even on the online book clubs, enthusiasm for old SF books isn’t that high, we mostly love this stuff for nostalgic reasons. I grew up thinking science fiction was genius thinking, but it’s not. Science fiction is fun, full of wild ideas, but ultimately, it’s superficial philosophically and contains very little scientific insights. Few science fiction stories are as brilliant as The Time Machine, most are closer to The War of the Worlds. The absolute best science fiction, like Orphans of the Sky and Dune, stand out for imagining unique concepts, while other great science fiction novels are merely good examples of story telling.

Two science books, The First Three Minutes and The Very First Light, and are about the discovery of the cosmic background radiation and were my most mind expanding reads this year in terms of understanding reality. The Canon was a great overview of science history, with an abundant of fascinating details. I highly recommend it to people wanting a quick study of science.

In terms of religious philosophy and history, The Evolution of God was quite educational and rewarding. Again expanding my knowledge of reality significantly. I’ve been slowly reading the Bible and The Evolution of God makes a great supplement.

The two music biographies, The Byrds and The Beatles, were fantastic reads and terrific strolls down memory lane. I could only get the abridged version of The Beatles on audio, but I have bought the fat hardback and I’m looking forward to reading it. However, reading these two books only reinforces my looking backwards towards the 1960s.

The lesson I’m learning from writing this post is I need to make 2010 the year of living in the present. I’ve already started that by playing contemporary music on Lala.com. Musically, the huge gravity well of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s holds me inside an event horizon and I have struggle to see the light of modern music.

The past is obviously a black hole pulling me into it – and I realize I need to fight its powerful pull. I desperately need to blast out of the orbit of looking backwards if I want to keep my mind expanding. I will never be young again, and I worry that nostalgia is a kind of premature burial. I do believe I stay current with computers and the Internet, at least more so than my age group peers. I’m also in touch with the current pop culture of movies and television. And I watch a lot of news and documentary shows, and I consume vast quantities of wordage from the Internet.

I find my reading year more exciting and fulfilling when I read new novels and books. The only 2009 books I read in 2009 were The Evolution of God, Why Women Have Sex and Magnificent Desolation. I’d like to read at least 12-15 2010 books in 2010.

JWH – 12/31/9

Flood by Stephen Baxter

Flood by Stephen Baxter has the feel of a typical mega-disaster novel, one where a cast of characters confronts a huge threat from all angles. Flood, appears to be a warning about global warming, but it’s not, not really. Baxter predicts yet another source of water flowing into the oceans to make their rise far more dramatic than the worst global warming predictions. Flood can almost be called a prequel to the film Waterworld.

For the average reader, maybe even the average science fiction reader, Flood is a scary novel that people will equate to the effects of global warming. That’s unfortunate. Flood is more in the tradition of end-of-the-world disaster novel, especially when you consider it’s sequel due out soon. Think of Flood as a special effects movie, like the recent film 2012, were movie goers go to watch the special effects of Earth being destroyed. Readers of Flood get to observe one great city after the another destroyed by water – Katrina times 1,000,000. Along the way mankind makes one valiant stand on high ground after another, each time hoping to gain a foothold to build a new world order, and time and again, each gallant effort is drowned by relentless rising waters. Baxter gets to show a variety of political solutions to the problem, and that in itself is interesting.

It’s quite fascinating to compare a literary end-of-the world novel like The Road by Cormac McCarthy to a science fiction genre novel like Flood. McCarthy’s story is 90% characterization and 10% details about the end of the world. Baxter’s story is 90% description about the end of the world and 10% characterization. The Road was 256 pages, and Flood is 490 – so we get a lot of details. Writing a novel like Flood is mind boggling to contemplate because of the massive amount of information involved. While reading Flood, I kept thinking about all the research Baxter had to do to create each page. Depending on your mood and reading tastes, Flood could seem like one long info-dump, or it could be a thrilling vision painted in words.

Now here’s the funny thing, McCarthy’s book is far more realistic. It’s far more likely to happen than Baxter’s story. I could even call The Road ultra hard literary science fiction. Flood, on the other hand, is something different. It’s totally unlikely to happen. It’s a made up scenario to make an epic science fictional fable. Baxter goes for the Big Wow! A superficial glance at the story would suggest it’s a warning about global warming – but again it’s not. If Baxter had written a more realistic tale of 2016-2052, with as much characterization as Cormac McCarthy’s story, we might be hailing him for writing a literary prophetic novel of global warming, but he didn’t.

Science fiction generally goes to for ridiculously big story, and in this case I’m torn between really enjoying the wild ride and being disappointed that Baxter failed to be serious and write a believable SF novel about humans altering the planet. McCarthy proved that deadly serious catastrophe novels can be big best sellers. I doubt Flood will receive any notice in the world of books at large, and only minor notice within the small world of science fiction readers.

Science fiction has always been about ideas, but not necessary realist ideas. On every page of Flood, Baxter gives his reader something big to think about, but the novel doesn’t have a traditional fictional structure, it’s more like a documentary that takes thirty-six years to film. For characterization, we get to watch a handful of reporters get old. It’s the kind of story that would have appeared in Astounding Science Fiction or Thrilling Wonder Stories.

The book does have plenty of ideas to explore philosophically. For example, at one point people in London are wondering if they should run for the hills, and then country folk blow up the roads and bridges letting them know they aren’t wanted. Will that happen in the real world? It’s a lot to think about. Throughout the book we hear about one species after another going extinct, but the one I was most chilled at was my kind, “The global extinction event has claimed the coach potato.” Flood does try to realistically portray collapsing urban environments, and it made me realize I wouldn’t have much of a chance.

Even with the weak characterization and monumental info-dumps Flood is a real page turner. Before mother nature gets Biblical on humanity, the book can be read as an illustration of what global warming might do to some cities, but after a point you realize Baxter is a kid bent on blowing everything up for the sense of wonder thrill of it all. And it is epic fun, in the same way When Worlds Collide thrilled me as at thirteen. I’m looking forward to reading the sequel Ark, which is why this book isn’t realistic, but ultimately very science fictional.

Baxter has created an amazing vision but I wished he had made the mixture at least 25% characterization and 75% details. The characters occasionally moved me, but for the most part they were pawns in the plot. Only when Grace does a runner did I feel any character acting on their own agenda and breaking free of Baxter’s strings. That’s how you tell great characterization – when all the characters have their own agendas making any plot meaningless. Characters are slave to plots in genre stories, and seldom get to break out. Great characters take control of their strings and make puppets of their authors. I wanted to rate Flood much lower because of the weak characterization, but the far out A+ science fiction overwhelms the story.

Final Grade: B+

JWH – 12/30/9

Roku HD – The Future of TV

I bought my wife a Roku HD for Christmas. She works out of town and wanted Netflix streaming for her little apartment. Before the Roku HD left the house forever, I thought I’d play with it and see how it compared to my Netflix streaming on my LG BD390 Blu-Ray player. In a way, I wished I hadn’t, because now I hate my LG BD390 Netflix streaming.

If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have bought the LG BD390. I spent $100 over my budget to get the highly rated LG BD390 because it had wireless-N built in and Netflix. The BD390 is great for playing Blu-Ray discs, but has been less than spectacular for Netflix and wireless. I would have been better off buying a basic Blu-Ray player and the Roku HD, spending the same as I had on the LG BD390. But I might not even agree with this decision by next Christmas.

I hooked up both the Roku HD and BD390 to the same wired Ethernet. The BD390 has never liked my Linksys WRT160N version 1 router – but that’s Cisco’s fault. Cisco won’t update the original model of this router and it needs it. I mention these annoying tribulations because anyone buying network devices to add to their TV need to be prepared for pitfalls and aggravations. However, even after I hardwired my den, the BD390 would not consistently work well with Netflix. My internet reception was usually one half of the gauge or a little over. On rare occasions I got HD reception and things looked fantastic. I keep waiting for a BD390 update that would tweak its Netflix feature, but so far I’ve been living with average quality Netflix streaming.

I set up the Roku HD, which was a complete snap. It’s a tiny device, weighing just ounces. (Here’s a peak inside the older model.) I’ve been watching an episode of Farscape every night, streamed via Netflix through my BD390, so I decided to look at the next episode on the Roku HD. I got 4 dot reception, that’s Roku talk for their streaming quality meter, the highest level of streaming. I was overwhelmed by how much better the image was over the LG. On the BD390 I assumed the show was old and the visuals were crude. But no! On the Roku HD the make-up, costumes, and sets are gorgeous. And my wife leaves this weekend taking the Roku HD with her! Bummer.

This morning I got up and played with the Roku Channel Store and found all kinds of extra content (Mediafly, Twit.tv, Revision3, etc.) Techie shows I love that drives my wife from the room. I was amazed by how good Internet TV content looked on my 52” HDTV. Since I’m already planning on building a HTPC that would replace my BD390, I’m now worried that anything I build won’t be equal to the elegant little Roku box.

Now take all of my enthusiasm for the Roku HD with a grain of salt. Go to the Roku Forums to read about other people’s experiences. Not everyone is getting 4 dot reception. Many fight with bad network connections, rebooting Roku boxes, bad updates, etc. Also, remember, generally only users with a problem come to the forums to begin with, so we don’t know how many people have fantastic out-of-the-box luck like I did.

But I am in trouble. I don’t want to watch Netflix streaming on my LG BD390 anymore. It’s a shame that Farscape isn’t on Blu-Ray, but for now I just put the DVDs into my queue and I’ll be networking the show via USPS mail. I would jump over to Amazon and order another Roku HD, but I want to wait and see if I can build a HTPC that does a better job instead. The Roku HD box has a very tiny chip to process the Internet video stream, so I’m wondering if a powerful CPU and GPU can do a better job. Watching the same episode streamed through my computer looks way better than the BD390, but not as good as the Roku HD, but that might be because I’m sitting twenty inches away from the LCD monitor and I’m sitting ten feet from my HDTV. Like I said, everything is very iffy with Internet TV watching. Twit.tv looked fantastic blown up to a 52” HDTV via the Roku HD box, but it looks just as great on my computer.

Actually, I’m struck with the overwhelming impression that the Roku HD box foretells the future of TV. We watched a HD movie over the Roku box and maybe it wasn’t Blu-Ray 1080p quality, but the illusion was damn close. I gave up Comcast cable to live with over-the-air broadcasts and Netflix and I’ve been very happy. If I could get all my TV from a little box like the Roku I would. I’d give up DVDs and Blu-Ray discs too. In my post about building an HTPC I wanted to reduce my entertainment center from 5 electronic devices connected to my Samsung HD to one.

If that one device could be something the size of the Roku box that would be even more elegant, but obviously, the solution is to put the little Roku circuit board inside of the TV and have just a TV and sound bar, and even then, why can’t they build a great sound bar into the TV too? You can see where this is going. A flat panel on the wall with a power cord and an Ethernet cable. No HD antenna, cable or satellite cable, and if wireless improved, the future TV wouldn’t even need an Ethernet cable. While I’m wishing, if they could also take the small circuit board from my Roku SoundBridge M1001 that streams music, and put it inside the TV too, we’d really be living in the future.

In other words, maybe I should hold off on building my HTPC. By Christmas 2010 or 2011 such a simple elegant TV solution might show up on the market. There are already TVs out with built-in Internet access, but they are limited. Obviously, such an Internet TV will bring about a tremendous paradigm change in the TV business. The Netflix model, of one monthly fee to watch exactly what you want to watch, and only that, is too powerful to ignore. Why pay big bucks to cable and satellite providers for 250 channels you don’t watch? Why hassle with HD antennas if the Internet provides better reception. Why buy DVDs and Blu-Ray discs and mess with storing them when Netflix will do all the work for you?

The Netflix model for video and the Rhapsody model for music should be the standard for the future, but will the content providers allow so many revenue streams to be dammed up? Will the Roku box change the TV world? If on-demand streaming content can approach the visual quality of Blu-Ray, why not?

JWH – 12/30/9

HTPC Advice Wanted

I want to build my own Home Theater PC (HTPC) but I have a number of decisions to make that I hope readers can advise me on. I want to build a low-cost HTPC that also uses as little energy as possible, especially since I will need to leave the machine on 24×7. The demands of a HTPC can be high, so I’m worried that a green low-powered chip might compromise the project. I’ve read reviews of a Polywell Mini-ITX HTPC with a N330 Atom dual processor combined with an NVIDIA ION chipset, using just 23-30w of electricity, but is it powerful enough to do the job? And is onboard graphics good enough, or will I need a discrete graphics card? Finally, I’d like my custom HTPC to replace several machines connected to my 52” Samsung DLP HDTV:

LG Blu-ray player
Pioneer CD/SACD player
Toshiba DVD recorder
Yamaha 5.1 receiver/amp
Roku SoundBridge M1001 media extender

I doubt I can find an internal Blu-Ray optical drive for my HTPC that can replace my SACD player, so it might be time to give up on that technology. I never bought more than a dozen SACDs anyway, but I will miss them.

I want my HTPC to do:

Record over-the-air HD broadcasts
Offer an elegant program guide to work with the DVR
Burn DVDs from shows recorded with DVR
Play Blu-Ray and DVD movies
Stream video from Netflix and Amazon
Stream video from Youtube, Hulu, Boxee, etc.
Stream music from Rhapsody, Lala, Pandora, etc.
Play music CDs
Use the Internet in my den while sitting in my La-Z-Boy
Store 200 GB of digital media
Be my digital photo librarian and slide projector
Be my home file and backup server
Run everything from one remote

Question 1: Can a sound card replace an standalone receiver?

Is it even possible for a HTPC to replace my Yamaha receiver? My current system has Infinity main and center speakers, and Bose for the rear channels. I never bought a subwoofer. I’m wondering if I could replace my receiver and speakers with some decent PC speakers or an amplified sound bar? I’m not a audiophile by any measure, but I like good sound.

Question 2: What benefits will I get from a more expensive chip?

I’m happy now Windows Media Center is working on my AMD 64 X2 4200+ chip, but would things be much better with a higher powered chip? For $50-75 I could get a very nice AMD chip. For $100 I can get a low end Intel Core 2 Duo, or even a AMD X4 chip. For more than double that I could get a high performance, low watt Intel mobile processor or i5. What HTPC features benefit from a more expensive chip?

Question 3: Will onboard graphics be good enough or will I need a good graphics card?

In terms of power consumption and cost, it would be great to live with the graphics built into the motherboard. I want to watch Internet TV, so how much does the graphics card affect the quality of Hulu and other streaming video sites? I’m not a big video game fan, but if I could play games hooked up to my big TV that might be fun. What’s a good green graphics card?

Question 4: Would I be better off buying or building?

Are there any good HTPC makers that sell systems within the price range of building my own? It’s a shame Dell can’t sell a Zino with a Blu-Ray player, 1GB drive and dual tuner TV card for $499. I wouldn’t mind buying a HTPC if it was priced well and came with a warranty, but I’m figuring to get the features I want, at the price I’m willing to pay, will require building it myself.

Question 5: Is there any reason not to base my system on Windows Media Center?

I’ve been happy with Windows Media Center in Windows 7 for TV recording, so is there any reason to consider another media center application? I was disappointed that Windows Media Center needed hours to burn a DVD of a 1 hour TV show it had recorded. Can other media center apps do it much faster? I’m not sure that Windows Media Center handles large listings of recorded TV shows or MP3 albums very well. What’s the best program for handling large libraries of media?

Question 6: How does Hulu and other TV streaming sites look on a large HDTV screen?

I’m worrying about buying a decent video card to stream Hulu TV, but will that investment pay off? Does TV streamed through Hulu look good on a big TV screen? I’ll be very disappointed if I buy a video card and Hulu isn’t worth watching.

JWH – 12/28/9

Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250 and Terk HDTVa Antenna Pro

My wife gave me and my computer a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250 TV tuner card and a Terk HDTVa antenna for Christmas. I had to do a lot of research before I gave Santa my wish list, but I must have been a very good boy this year because that research paid off perfectly. I want to build a HTPC for my den, but I thought I’d experiment first by adding over-the-air TV to my computer. My previous TV tuner card experience consisted of working with an ATI HD-Wonder card on three different computers over the last three years. What I learned by playing with that TV tuner card is making TV work on a computer leads to high blood pressure and a desire to seek the simple life. And I’ve found many a blogger that confirmed this lesson.

I was very worried that Santa would bring me another lump of coal, but I got a cool toy instead! I knew it helped to have a computer and graphics card with a certain level of oomph and I was worried my old HP Pavillion a6000n with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ and NVIDEA GeForce 8500 GT graphic card lacked the horsepower. I kept reading Best HDTV Tuner for PC’s over and over, looking for clues and advice, and finally figured I needed a tuner card with a PCIe connector to increase the bandwidth between the card and computer. I was going to go with their highly rated AVertTV HD Duet, but after comparing the buyer’s comments at Amazon with it and the Hauppauge 1250, I decided to go with the cheaper card.

Both cards are designed to be simple, tuning either over-the-air TV or clearQAM cable signals. Make sure you have a PCIe slot free if you buy this type of card. Best HDTV Tuner for PC’s actually seem to prefer USB tuners, but I was afraid to try them because of poor bandwidth issues with my old PCI based card.

I made a very lucky guess because I popped the 1250 in my PC running Windows 7 Professional and the 1250 was recognized and installed automatically. In fact Windows Media Center did such an excellent job of configuring the card that I decided not to install the Hauppauge media center software or even try out any of the other media center applications, like XBMC, Boxee, SageTV or MythTV. I’ll save that research for when I build my den HTPC.

The Terk HDTVa antenna also worked out well. We have two local channels here in Memphis that still transmit on VHF that causes lots of trouble for indoor antenna users. I tried the Terk without amplification and couldn’t tune in channels 5 and 13, but the Terk tuned them in great after plugging in its amplifier.

The bundled Hauppauge remote did not work out of the box with Windows Media Center, but I went to the install CD and manually ran IR32.exe and bingo the remote was recognized. I would love to find a way to get this remote to work with other Windows programs. I’d like to be able to sit in my reading chair and change music from across the room. I’d especially love to be able to remote control Lala.com. However, this brings up another issue for dealing with building a HTPC, and that’s the user interface and how visible it is from across the room.

Even sitting right at the computer with mouse in hand, getting to a particular TV show, photograph, film or song takes a lot of clicking. Windows Media Center works hard to help, offering many ways to search. I was delighted by searching for albums by their release year. I also liked searching through my music by album cover. However, with over 1200+ CDs, it’s hard to find a particular CD. This isn’t an Achilles heel of Windows Media Center, but a central problem of all media managers. Try finding a song from 1200+ CDs in iTunes with a remote from across the room.

The ultimate solution is either to have voice commands like in Star Trek, or have a handheld controller like those from Sonos or remote control programs that work with the iPhone or iPod touch. Having a touch screen UI on the remote is the way to go now.

One thing I immediately liked about Windows Media Center is it allowed me to list only my preferred TV channels in my guide. I mainly watch PBS, CBS, ABC, NBC and extremely rarely CW and FOX. I blocked another dozen plus local channels, and I may block CW and FOX. This makes my onscreen guide very easy to read. However, I haven’t found out how to make it jump to a particular time and day. It will take me awhile to explore the depths of Windows Media Center. From reviews I’ve read, Windows Media Center is a great program, but some of the other media center applications offer tremendous customization (but with steep learning curves).

Windows Media Center is like a super Windows Media Player, with a UI that scales up with big lettering for watching on a TV set. When I build my HTPC for the den, and start using it from across the room, while sitting in my La-Z-Boy with a remote in hand, I’ll know then whether Windows Media Center succeeds or not. I gave up cable TV to save money and have a very simple TV lifestyle, so any solution I keep must be frustration free.

And any HTPC I build must be simple to use too, and so far Windows Media Center and the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1250 fits the bill. Right now I have a Blu-Ray player, DVD-recorder and CD/SACD player in my den setup, along with a receiver/amp. I’d love to build a HTPC that replaced all four boxes so all I had was the HDTV and HTPC. That would save electricity, reduce my pile of remotes, and may make my TV watching more simplistic. As I get older, simple often means elegant.

My goal for having a TV tuner in my home office PC is so I can record the news and documentaries and watch them while checking email and web surfing. Setting up recordings was a snap with Windows Media Center The image quality is excellent for HD broadcasts, so I might even start watching short shows like The Big Bang Theory at my computer too. I doubt I’d want to watch movies or hour dramas while seated at the computer. And if I don’t like watching TV at all on my computer screen I’ll yank out the 1250 card and put it into a new HTPC box for the den.

JWH – 12/25/9