OpenBSD does a good job on pretty much everything they take up, but they have to proritize what they work on, because they don’t have as much manpower as other projects (i.e., FreeBSD, and especially Linux). Anyway, SMP is one of the things that gets the short shrift sometimes because other projects tend to take [...]
FrontPage magazine.com :: The Second Mexican War by Lawrence Auster This article is the best single piece that so aptly describes what the real problem with immigration is. He really does a good job of sticking to the big picture, giving background info, and more. I haven’t even finished reading it myself (it’s fairly lengthy), [...]
Lost Garden: Software Development’s Evolution towards Product Design Great article. I couldn’t say that I disagree with him on anything except for the bit about offices vs. open spaces. I will *always* opt for an office over a cubicle or otherwise open working space. Always. If you have an office space, you can still get [...]
Hop on over to boost.org and see for yourself; it’s a collection of neat libraries that are all peer-reviewed, and adhere to the traditional (and standardized) C++ paradigm. I like it a lot. But jeez louise. Did they really have to make their own build tool? Boost.Jam is unbelievably complicated, and more importantly, all the [...]
I received a letter from the NRSC the other day. It was a typical GOP fundraising letter, filled with lowbrow, ra-ra nonsense. I really hate those letters; the Republican platform (which is modeled after the conservative agenda) is reduced to a few talking points that are designed to prod you into a panic about the [...]
Author: James Luceno
Year: 2005
Publisher: Del Rey
ISBN: 0345477324
Buy it here: 
This book is one of many Star Wars novels that I’ve read. I’ve been trying to go back and fill in all the chronological gaps left by the movies. I’ve even been reading the novelizations of the movies because the possibilities for character development are much greater in a novel. The books also give more attention to the subplot about Qui-Gon and the revelation that he retained his identity while yet being “in the Force”. The movies barely touch on this, and to be fair, the books don’t dwell on it too much either.
Anyway, this book isn’t the best of the ones I’ve read. It’s a little thin; most of the novels I’ve read have nearly 400 pages, and this one only has 336 (according to Amazon.com – it seems less than that). There are parts of the book that were slow-going, particularly when the attention was on Roan Shryne and the other Jedi that appear in the book. This book is really about Darth Vader and his struggle against his former self (Anakin Skywalker), Obi-Wan (and the Jedi Order as a whole), Padme, his new suit that he depends on for life, and even Darth Sidious. He learns to tap into his rage for power, and learns the Sith philosophy of power and its proper use. The relationship between Sith Master and Apprentice is fleshed out quite a bit more in this book, which I appreciated.
We also see some familar characters emerge in this novel. Moff Tarkin makes his first appearance (ok, technically he appeared in Ep. III, but almost as an extra). We see more of Chewbacca, a small handful of Imperial captains and officers that we hear more about later on. Some of the usual suspects are present also, like Bail Organa, Mon Mothma, and a few others. We learn a little more about what happened to Yoda, although he was noticeably abscent from actually appearing in the novel.
A nice touch is at the end, where a chapter is devoted to Obi-Wan’s new life of watching over Luke on the desert world of Tatooine.
Final Recommendation: A must read, because it does much to fill in the gaps left by the movies, but there’s quite a bit of fluff, and half of the main characters are boring. Worth the read, but don’t drag it out or you might lose interest.
Animated GIFs — From MathWorld These make for some pretty nifty visualizations of highly abstract mathematical notions.
The Science Creative Quarterly » A GAME THEORETIC APPROACH TO THE TOILET SEAT PROBLEM This is hilharious. I may come back to this to prove the conjecture referenced in Remark (5).
I recently sent an email to John Derbyshire, a contributor to The Corner over at National Review Online. I was pleased to see him post my message.
Crud. I’ve spent some time trying to figure out a portable way to do this, and it’s not simple. At all. If you don’t care about portability and you use win32 or linux, then there are simple solutions because the OS maintains a list of symbols and can give them to user applications at any [...]