02 January 2016
Yesterday I posted this on App.net:
“Copyright of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf expires.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35209185
Here’s a quote from the article:
“…annotated version, with thousands of academic notes, will aim… to show that Mein Kampf is incoherent and badly written, rather than powerful or seductive.”
I laughed out loud.
App.net’s (ADN’s) @blumenkraft, being German and with that country’s unique perspective, opined “it’s a peace of crap! i love they did the afford to set it into a historical context.”
To which I replied “My wife read it a few years ago, during a philosophy phase. At the time she told me pretty much what you and the article say. #NotOnMyBucketListForAReason”
ADN’s @jeremycherfas also responded: “The Economist’s article was a very good one.” So I did a quick search and came up with:
What the Führer means for Germans today: Seventy years after Adolf Hitler’s death, how Germans see him is changing. - a very interesting read.
Within that article, a reference to a novel:
“The latest bestseller is “Look Who’s Back” by Timur Vermes, translated into English this year. Hitler wakes up in today’s Berlin near his old bunker. Disoriented at first, he so amuses everybody he meets, including his Turkish dry-cleaner, that he is launched on a meteoric career as a comedian. His hip colleagues are convinced that he is a consummate “messed ekta” (Berlinish-English for method actor) offering a subtle critique of modern media culture.”
Me to Jeremy: “Thanks. On the strength of it I just grabbed a trial of ‘Look Who’s Back’ from the Kindle store.” I also added a screenshot of its cover. 
I read the introduction, laughed out loud again, read chapter 1 and settled nicely into chapter 2, at which point the preview ended. So I bought it.
Jeremy had asked me to report back what I made of the trial, and upon my few disorganised words said “Good recommendation. I might even add it to my own list. In fact, I will. I take it you’ve read Robert Harris’ Fatherland?”
At this point I shall step out of conversation mode and into…
Ah, no, I hadn’t read it, but I give thanks for his recommendation, but with reservations…
My focus for the last 30-something years had been predominantly sci-fi/satire/humour. ‘History’ tends to be restricted to the facts; I’m really not a fan of historical dramatisations (TV/film, whatever, Blackadder excepted.)
Prior to puberty I’d read children’s books, then gravitated through some of the English Classics, especially the more accessible Dickens, that sort of thing; and all the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. All of ‘em. I was then a voracious reader (as is my oldest daughter today.)
And then I read my first Isaac Asimov; The Early Asimov - a boxed 3-volume set, acquired second-hand from a stall on Rochdale Market. The best bit of their transactions, aside from saving money over new; a return-for-half-purchase-price when buying more. Awesome! But financial transactions aren’t as important as the power of the written word when welded to a willing mind. Mine.
That led me to a long exploration of sci-fi. Bear, E.E. (Doc) Smith, Niven/Pournelle/Barnes, more Asimov, Brin, L.Ron Hubbard (his Battlefield Earth is a great book) and, well, suffice it to say it’s a big list. All gone now apart from a selection of Niven et al, and of course my Asimovs.
I read other genres, e.g. Tolkien, e.g. shed-loads of nonfiction, but nothing compared to the impact sci-fi had on me over time - for allowing me to escape.
It takes me three passes to fully explore a novel: a first quick skim, a later slower read, and months later a final deep exploration pf what subtleties remain. No, I utterly failed to on the one book: The Lord of the Rings. I’ve ‘only’ read it twice, though I attempted a third. (I’m no Christopher Lee!)
And then, when I least expected it, my wife-to-be arrived; with cats, responsibilities, children, and a consequent loss of free time and focus.
Back to the Hitler related novel; “Quite a departure for me, this…” I said to Jeremy, “…but this is still well within my comfort zone. Just opened my wife’s copy of Mein Kampf, compared it with my Churchill’s The Second World War. Actually there’s no comparison, but I might just flick through the former after the novel.”
Honesty time: I really didn’t get far into Churchill’s tome. But I’ve dipped in on the odd occasion as documentaries have appeared on the telly. Incidentally, when I can get a visually un-truncated version of The World at War, I probably will.
2016 sounds like it’ll be the year I make the time to read my queue. No more excuses.
01 January 2016
Well here we are; at the time of writing another year has, for a large percentage of the world’s population, already expired. For the rest, the next is only a few weeks away.
Now, like Christmas is simply an arbitrary date (with variations) thrown at a calendar put together by westerners, the year end/year beginning are both just another day.
Days for reflection, sure, and planning, reminiscing, dreaming; days of intense significance for many.
In mid-October 2015 I made a Bucket List. That was, to be fair, my reflection and reminiscing piece. During 2016 I really don’t expect to fulfil any of those dreams, check off those items on my list; I’ve other things to set my sights on.
I’ve connections and reconnections to make, days away to plan alongside my family, to become if not more successful at work at least more organised. I’m confident of a measure of success in all; picking the items on this deceptively short list gives me at least that confidence, but how will this list of future things go?
I’ll be sure to let you know.
31 December 2015
2015 was a year with a lot of downs, and I’ll be glad to see its end. Really. There were of course positives, but overall zero sense of balance.
2014 was equally odd in that regard; my wife nearly died in the July and, restricting myself to social networking, I’d:
- Messed about with Linux doing some, what I’d call, rudimentary shell script coding based on top of Ayadn - a command line client for the App.net social network,
- Inexplicably tailed off from my initial enthusiasm with the App.net Wiki, and have struggled to retain that,
- Told everyone I wasn’t going to be using Facebook again,
- Or Twitter.
2015, a year in review:
This year I continued my idiosyncratic approach:
- Increasing my use of footnotes* in social media posts,
- Adopting the [Oxford Comma] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma) more widely, occasionally even abbreviating the following “and” to “&”! And, even though I know it’s not its only use case, preceding only “and” gives me room to grow,
- Starting to use the Semicolon more frequently.
This last one puzzles me. Until late this year I’d almost never used it, succumbing as I did to peer pressure during my final couple of years at school by intentionally not caring about ‘English’ lessons. So why now?
A desire for self-improvement perhaps?
2015 also brought:
- A late-year increase in the frequency of my blog posts, partially in response to installing the Journey (daily) journal app on my Android phone,
- My slow-but-sure takeover of the #ThemeMonday hashtag on App.net (page needs updating.) I make the call to choose a shortlist of themes, collate, remind, and then post a poll to get votes to pick each. It’s not hard work, not really.
So, this blog post ends as the year ends, on a low note:
2015 does not get Baz’s Seal of Approval; really, it’s had very, very few highlights.
The only standout was a weekend trip to London with my family, my first. (Family and trip to England’s capital.)
[Edit:] Ruby puppy arrived in April. Now that changes my perspective a tiny bit towards favouring ‘balance.’
*I can’t honestly recall when I started using footnotes, it could have been 2014.
I reserve the right to edit this post as events unfold on this, the last day of the year. Naturally I reserve the right to edit all the posts but rarely do, aside from typos.
30 December 2015
During 2000 I visited the USA on an escorted coach tour. Part-way through we stopped at a tax-free shopping outlet; not a mall but one of those unpreposessing, drab buildings, the exteriors of which belie their contents.
I looked around for a while and, almost in desperation, bought a grey SwissCard - this newer variant on the Victorinox site is almost identical, save for the case material.
It has just enough tools to be useful whilst being thin enough to fit in my wallet:
- nail file,
- screwdriver,
- toothpick,
- tweezers,
- pen,
- pin,
- blade,
- scissors,
- measuring scale along the side.
Though the knife is around 15 years old and though I’ve looked after it, it’s never been sharpened since new. Which makes all the more remarkable the fact that today I stripped the wires in an extension reel cable, to repair it after our otherwise-delightful Ruby dog chewed right through the insulation.*
If only everything lasted as long.
*She’s fine, it wasn’t live!
30 December 2015
I have absolutely no desire to learn command-line Git; the available GUI-based tools are more than sufficient for me, and especially that installed on my Android phone.
I’ll let that sink in…
I use the really rather good Pocket Git, allied with its companion text editor DroidEdit. The only thing it seems to be missing, for this novice at least, is ‘Issues’ support.
Besides, github.com has, in theory, that and everything else I need. (But I have the ForkHub app anyway.)
Having a Git app on my phone, and working with a tiny amount of text visible above the virtual keyboard, might seem silly. But, I need no Internet connection to work on my stuff - not, that is, until it gets to a push.
Incidentally, DroidEdit isn’t a text editor. It’s a source code and text editor with syntax highlighting, and has support for “Dropbox, Drive, Box, (S)FTP servers and Git.”
I haven’t given anything Baz’s Seal of approval recently. Pocket Git and DroidEdit both get awards.