GENZARD Blog

Yes, they are The Great Ones, The Magnificent Four, The Angels – the names and descriptions can convey only so much. That’s why you had to be there – Belgrade Arena, March 26th. It was an extraordinary Evening with Il Divo.

I can not find the words to express how I felt that night and how much I enjoyed the concert… So, I’ll just point you in the right direction

The opening chapter of Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder is mind-boggling. Not that the rest of book is less so, but that first hit was so unexpected that I was really in a shock. I had to adapt, wrap my mind around the new “reality”, all the new ideas and their implications. And that kind of stuff kept coming at me, page after page, but having experienced that first wave, I’ve braced myself and started enjoying it.

And there’s plenty to enjoy if you’re an SF fan. Because this is hard science fiction at its best. The concept of `Societies` is an excellently extrapolated vision of the social interactions we’re having on the net today. Same goes for the `Inscape` and the `Manifolds` – the idea that your location and actions in the “real” world are almost of no significance and that it’s all about the “virtual” world, takes some time to get used to.

I don’t like too much action in any novel, and this one has just about the right amount of it (e.g. Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks has a bit too much for my taste and The Player of Games by the same author is spot on), but you won’t even notice it while you’re reading as the world and the story are overwhelming. There are moments when you realize that a common word does not have the same meaning any more, as the circumstances are quite different from the real world and realizing it only pulls you deeper into this imagined world.

Having said all that, it shouldn’t be surprising that I’ve already downloaded the free Ventus novel from the author’s official site and as I haven’t read Sun of Suns either (downloaded from Tor.com last year), I expect to be having great time submerged into the distant future.

Very soon into Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris it became clear to me that the book will turn out to be a debugging story – how to fix the bugs that broke the magic. And I suppose maybe that’s why I found the novel a bit disappointing. Don’t get me wrong – there are some great ideas in there and the book is fun to read, but when it came to fixing the magic, I could spot the problem way before Raoden did and I don’t like that. I like to be surprised by the finale, not to have the final chapters of the book “reveal” what I already knew or guessed. Have I expected too much? Or should software developers not read debugging fiction? O;)

I don’t like comparing books and authors, but I remember having the same feeling after closing down  The Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings. The story was too obvious, unchallenging, shallow… I’ve never picked up another Eddings book. I’m not so sure about Sanderson. I’ve downloaded Mistborn from Tor.com last year and I think I’ll give it a try. If it turns out to be as obvious as Elantris, I’m pretty sure Sanderson will follow in Eddings’ footsteps as far as I’m concerned.

Last night my wife and I went to the Little Bay restaurant in Belgrade. We were told that Toby Sims will perform for the guests and that we shouldn’t miss it. It’s a nice place, not too big, not too small and quite intimate actually. The first thing that struck me as strange was the fact that I couldn’t see a stage, but I dismissed it thinking that he’ll probably sing from a balcony.

I couldn’t have been farther from the truth! Surely enough, he did perform on the balcony, but you should have seen the way he climbed onto it! Running between tables, jumping from the stairs, lying on the floor… He performed at almost every single table, kneeling in front of the ladies and holding their hands singing to them. No one was spared, not even the waitress.

I haven’t seen anything like it. An unforgettable evening. Absolutely hilarious!

We’ve only realized how much we’ve missed a dog around the house when we got a new one We’ve previously had a Rough Collie (Lesi) which was our favorite for more than 12 years and a couple of mixed breeds (Rea & Ogi), but as of last year no dogs roamed our yard and we kept postponing the day when we would get a new one. For what reason, I now really don’t know as the newcomer, an Epagneul Breton named Bobi, has absolutely captured our hearts.

Bobi is a year and a half old and has been living in a flat in Belgrade until last Saturday. Now he’s got a big yard all to himself and I think he’s delighted with being able to go to the “park” whenever he wants.

I’ve uploaded a small gallery with pictures from his first few days here and the previous owners supplied a couple of photos from back when he was a puppy.

He’s absolutely adorable Constantly running, chasing balls, apples, nuts, cats or whatever happens to be available. On rare moments when he keeps still, he enjoys being patted, stroked, cuddled and scratched, but even then he’s always ready to jump up and go chasing whatever he’s spotted

Don’t have a dog? What are you waiting for?

I love Linux My main dev machine runs Ubuntu 8.04 and I had PCLinuxOS 2007 on my laptop (Fujtsu-Siemens Amilo A1655G) until yesterday evening, when I decided to replace it with openSUSE 11.0. Why? Well, I haven’t had a chance to check it out recently and I just wanted to see how the new version works and feels

The installation went smoothly and it detected all the hardware. However, when I tried to turn the wireless card on (there’s a button right beside the power button), the HDD light flickered a bit and nothing happened. I checked again and after some consultations on the openSUSE Forum, we concluded that the card was successfully detected and installed, but was “simply” turned off…

Checking the log file (/var/log/messages) revealed that the OS did not know what to do when the wireless button was pressed. My first idea was to try to find the correct key code and just link the button to it, but after some unsuccessful attempts I found something better – a kernel module (fsaa1655g) which allows turning the wireless card on and off from the command line

The installation of the module failed the first time i attempted it, but installing kernel sources and updating the kernel to match the source version did the trick and I managed to install the module. That’s when the wireless LED finally agreed to light up for me

So, why do I love Linux after all the trouble? It’s an excellent OS, that’s why

The fair is my “secret” place for finding the books I can’t find anywhere else during the year. Usually, the publishers and bookstore owners bring almost everything they’ve got, including the long forgotten English titles from the murky depths of their cellars. A treasure trove, really

Not this year Looks like they’ve been very busy printing new books to fill their stands. Not necessarily a bad thing, I agree, but that’s not the point. At least not for me. I understand that the fair is their chance to show off their “latest and greatest” and that’s OK, but newly printed books are very easy to find – every bookstore has them and promotes them before, during and after the fair. I thought the whole point was to allow the visitors to see everything you’ve got…

Or maybe it’s only me not understanding what it’s all about and expecting too much.

We’ll see what happens next year. Until then, I suppose I’ll have to find some other place where the forgotten books go for their final reader hunt.

Exactly one month ago, on a Saturday morning, I received an SMS message from the phone company, notifying me that my application for an ADSL line has been approved. All I had to do was to visit them, sign the contract and pick up the router. It does sound nice and easy, doesn’t it? Professional even. That’s if you don’t know the rest of the story…

I’ve submitted the application more than 3 and a half years ago! Yes, years – it was on February 17th, 2005. I’ve given up any hope that such a technological advance would ever reach my doorstep. As the dial-up connection was far too slow for my work, no wireless access points anywhere in sight, no cable company interested in providing internet access, I’ve decided to go for a satellite connection. It was faster than the dial-up (up to 2Mbit/s downlink with OpenSky’s SatSurf subscription), but it was a one-way connection and there was the uplink problem. I used the old dial-up for a few months, but finally decided to try a GRPS/EDGE subscription from my mobile phone company. And it worked OK… It had its downsides (satellite round-trip delay, configuration issues both on Windows and Linux and it simply involved a lot of hardware), but it was far better than the alternative.

Now it all feels like a bad dream I had a very long time ago. I’ve also added a wireless router to the mix – all computers can access the internet, nice and easy. I simply love happy endings

Looking back, it’s been almost 20 years since I first had an Ursula K. Le Guin book in my hands – a set of six books in fact: The Word for World is Forest, Rocannon’s World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions, The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. It was my first taste of science fiction. And I liked it. Very, very much. Some years later I ran into the Earthsea novels and again a whole new world opened before my eyes. I was fascinated. And totally hooked. Science fiction and fantasy novels have been my favorite reads ever since.

Last month I read another of her novels. No, not the latest one. An old one, actually, from the SF Masterworks series – The Lathe of Heaven. A jewel. Takes the concept of dreams and the power they can have on our world and examines it from every angle. What happens when the dreams we have come face to face with reality? Will they just collapse or maybe change the world? Will the change be for the better or for the worse? Will it last? Does joining forces with others help us make it last and not lose the very essence of our being in the process… Very powerful.

I’m looking forward both to her latest book (Lavinia) and to other titles from the SF Masterworks series

P.S. There are also two movies (1980 & 2002) based on the book, but I haven’t seen either of them.

Welcome to the GENZARD Blog. The posts will be our opinions on just about everything. The initial categories include `Books`, `Websites`, `Food`, `Places`, `Magazines`, `Online Services`, `Applications`, `Sports`… It should be fun Enjoy