from the desk of H. Bowie...

Herb's Blog:

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Finished reading Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd

First book I’ve read by this author. A sort of origin story for a British spy starting to work in the early sixties. Seems to be the start of a planned series. Well written, thoroughly engaging. Lots of interesting historical references. If this book brings something new to the genre, then I suppose it would be the provision of a convincing back story for why and how a young man would become involved in such an activity, and what sort of young man that might be.

rating: ★★★

link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel%27s_Moon

Finished reading What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe

An interesting read. Would have been even more interesting if I were British and reading it when it first came out. A bit of a mystery and a bit of a horror story, and also a political satire.

rating: ★★★

link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_a_Carve_Up!_(novel)

Junior World Cycling Championship in The Netherlands

We’re in Apeldoorn to see and support our grand-niece who is representing New Zealand in the world junior cycling championship races being held here this week (and being advertised on the posters in the background). She does endurance track racing, and is a very talented and determined young woman!

Visit to the Magritte Museum

Visited the Magritte museum today in Brussels, and was happy to come across his painting “L’Empire des Lumières”, which was the inspiration for the album cover for Jackson Browne’s Late for the Sky, about which I have written extensively at ReasonToRock.com.

link: lexiconofsong.org/late-for-the-sky.html

Released Notenik Version 17.4.1

Turns out there was a fatal bug in 17.4.0, which caused Notenik to crash when creating a new collection (or opening any collection containing only one note).

This turned out to be a rookie coding error — trying to access the first item in a list with a subscript of 1, instead of a subscript of 0.

I can’t believe I coded this, and imagine it was an XCode “hallucination” that I let slip by my fingers without correction.

XCode’s “suggestions” are often helpful, but this is a bit of a red flag for me.

I’ll have to be more careful and intentional in the future.

Blog Creation

Starting work on this new blog. This is as much for myself, as for anyone else (although I do plan to publish it on the web, and vis RSS).

I’ve realized recently that I’ve been too much constrained by other people’s ideas of what such a thing should look like.

So my starting point is to create a new Notenik collection for myself, to keep track of ideas/achievements and so on.

If other people are interested in following and/or commenting, then that is fine. But my goal here is first and foremost to create something for myself, not to attract followers.

Also note that I am backfilling some content relating to past accomplishments, and not just starting at this point and moving forward.

Released Notenik Version 17.4.0

The Seq field has been opened up to allow multiple values, separated by semicolons; the shortcut keys used to navigate a collection index have been updated to avoid a conflict with normal macOS key combinations used for text editing; added an option to write note lines containing labels only, without any data.

All of these improvements resulted from user suggestions made on the Notenik Discourse Forum.

link: notenik.app/kb/version-17.4.0.html

Finished reading The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe

I thought this was a fantastic read, mixing together social commentary, murder mystery plus insights on the rationale for storytelling, as well as demonstrating the effects of different sorts of narrative styles. And Coe manages to juggle all of these different interests while still delivering a darned good story. Also of note: Coe does a good job of broadening his social commentary to include American as as well as British readers, so one need not be an expert on British politics to follow along.

rating: ★★★★★

link: www.europaeditions.com/book/9798889660927/the-proof-of-my...

Lexicon of Song – 300 clicks in 28 days

Just recently registered the Lexicon of Song site with Google Search, and people seem to be finding it. Cool.

link: lexiconofsong.org/

Published “Remembering Hank”

I still remember the first time we laid eyes on Hank. It was a sunny day in May, and we met him and his current owner in a park somewhere nearby, on neutral territory. And then, when we saw Hank, I quickly realized the gravity of the decision we were about to make. Because Hank was tail-waggingly perfect. So there was no question of passing on him, and holding out for a better dog. Because I couldn’t imagine what a better dog would look like.

link: hbowie.net/writings/remembering-hank.html

Published “It Takes All Kinds”

Seems a pity that this timeworn expression is not heard much anymore: “It takes all kinds.” Could express appreciation or grudging tolerance. Either seems vastly preferable to most of what we hear today about others who are different from us.

link: hbowie.net/writings/it-takes-all-kinds.html

Published “Thoughts on AI: Apple and Otherwise”

There’s been a lot of discussion lately about AI, and Apple’s AI problems in particular, and I have some potentially useful, and perhaps even original, thoughts on these subjects. Amidst all the fascination about the amazing things that AI can do, I think many of us tend to lose sight of some of the essential characteristics of this relatively new technology.

link: hbowie.net/writings/thoughts-on-ai-apple-and-otherwise.html

Published “More Markdown and HTML, Please”

Markdown is admittedly not for everyone, and not equally useful in all contexts, but its usage continues to grow, and arguably has more headroom for further growth.

link: hbowie.net/writings/more-markdown-and-html-please.html

Finished reading So Far Gone by Jess Walter

A bit of a thriller, with some social and philosophical commentary thrown in for good measure. I really enjoyed it!

rating: ★★★★

link: www.harpercollins.com/products/so-far-gone-jess-walter

Finished reading The Man with the Silver Saab by Alexander McCall Smith

Solid, entertaining, with interesting characters and a dry sense of humor.

rating: ★★★

link: www.alexandermccallsmith.co.uk/

Finished watching The Big Heat (film) by Fritz Lang

Interesting because the scene of gangster Vince Stone disfiguring his girlfriend by throwing a pot of boiling coffee in her face is a sort of archetype for the scene of a mobster disfiguring his girlfriend with a Coke bottle in works/The Long Goodbye (film).

rating: ★★★★

link: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Heat

Finished reading Purity by Jonathan Franzen

Good book (partially set in and around Santa Cruz, CA!) that brings together disparate characters and experiences into a convincing and haunting narrative.

rating: ★★★★

link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_(novel)

Finished reading Capitalism, Degrowth and the Steady State Economy Debating Future Economic Models by Theodore P. Lianos

This is a bracing little read. Lots of writers these days toss around the possibility of some alternative to capitalism being a preferable economic model without indulging in very many specifics about how such a thing would work, or how such a change would come about. The author here takes a somewhat rigorous (and mercifully brief) approach to examining various alternatives, and concludes that most of these won’t hold water, and finally lands on a degrowth/steady state economy as our necessary future.

rating: ★★★★★

link: link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-60247-4

Finished reading Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

Loved this modern take on a spy story, with an undercover agent and a number of interesting philosophical threads.

rating: ★★★★★

Finished watching The Long Goodbye (film) by Robert Altman

This was the date on which I first viewed The Long Goodbye, followed by many other viewings over the years (including my first date with the woman who would become my wife, Pauline).

rating: ★★★★★

link: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Goodbye_(film)