I can’t express how proud I am of our nation right now, not just because we’ve elected the first African American, but because we’ve elected a truly great man and the leader our country needs. Barack Obama will guide us back to the just path our country needs to be on, and right all of the wrongs our past leaders have done to us as a people.

McCain’s concession speech made enough reference to Barack’s race to imply that was why he was elected. Such an implication is not true. He won because he stuck to the truth and promised us change. We all now wait to see this change, and I for one am not worried.

That said, I still am immensely proud of seeing this happen in my lifetime. Mock me if you will, but I’ve always loved Tupac Shakur’s aptly titled song Changes. One line of the lines in this song reads:

“And although it seems heaven sent, We ain’t ready, to see a black President”

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Look how far we’ve come not only in the decade since that line was written, but more importantly, since the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts of 1964 and 1965.

The Democrats are back in control and its time to make this nation great once again. I’m proud to be an American.

With just an hour to go until the first polls close, many people have asked me if I’m nervous. I voted two weeks ago and even then I was cautiously optimistic. I am by no means cocky and I knock on wood as I write this, but I think Obama has a fantastic shot.

Matty B. Turned me onto a great website for electoral vote projections and information in general about the elections, www.fivethirtyeight.com, and I’ve been there throughout the last couple of months. One of the latest articles posted there affirm my optimism:

If those states go roughly as expected (meaning, say, an Obama win in Virginia and a close race in Indiana), we can conclude with almost literal 100 percent certainty that Obama will win the election

fivethirtyeight.com

C’mon Virginia! Vote Obama!

I’m crossing my fingers, eating bread and cinnamon butter in lieu of popcorn, and watchin’ the map

When I first read this, about 2 minutes ago, I shouted “Oh my good f***!” in a room full of strangers:

Boondock Saints 2 is officially filming, right now, in Toronto.

Get more info plus a couple of production diaries over at Geeks of Doom (the above link).

I found Shelfari a little over two years ago. Back then it was in private beta I believe, and it had the usual kinks and errors to work out, but it was even then a well done and well integrated website. Its grown into a very beautiful site with a great community of friendly interesting readers with some really nice discussion groups.

A sampling from my shelf

I’ll leave the formal reviews to other sites, and suffice it to say that Shelfari has some really neat features like everyone having their own interactive bookshelf to display and personally track the books they own, have read, want to read, etc. When I first got on I entered in every book in my apartment, and although I am far from having every book I’ve ever read in there, I sure as heck have most of them. If you ever want to buy me a book but are unsure of whether I already own it, just check my shelf!

I was reading reviews of some Robert A. Heinlein novels, one of my all-time favorite authors, and I came across a really short, unintellectual, un-cited review of Stranger in a Strange Land that I should have ignored but made me fear others would take it seriously, so I decided to write my own. You can search for my review on the book’s page, but I figured it’d be a lot easier if I just reproduce it below. I certainly won’t be offended if you don’t read it, but if you’ve ever wondered about the book, you may find it useful (BTW: You’ll notice I referenced the passage I quoted in the Garfield Minus Garfield post, because it really is one of my favorites). I hope I did it justice and if you agree or disagree or if my memory just plain sucks, please do let me know in the comments or email (euicho at euicho dot com).

Stranger in a Strange Land, A Review

Thomas S.E. Gagnon

Stranger in a Strange Land is a story I hold quite fond in my heart. This novel taught me a lot about life and human nature. Some say it was Robert Heinlein’s way of coming to terms with what Hubbard was doing at the time, while others think it’s just a dated and closed minded book. I find it to be an insightful comment on being human and dealing with all that entails, as well as challenging our own set ways of thought. I am by no means a subscriber to the philosophy of “free love” that finds its way into this novel, but I still absolutely loved this book.

If you’re not sure what this story is about, the short, short synopsis is that it’s about a human male, raised as a martian, coming to earth and learning how to be human, and about human beliefs vs. the martian ones he grew up with. However that description is unjustly simplified–it is really so much more than that. Stranger in a Strange Land challenges common views on organized religion, sexuality, and family structure. Although written by a SF grandmaster, and dealing with an “alien”, the story is set on Earth and deals strongly with character development versus cheap techno-thrills, so if you’re not really into SF this book should still strongly appeal to you.

Now, as I’ve read some of the other reviews on here, I feel a need to defend this novel against attacks. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, including those who hated this novel, and what follows is my own.

Some people have claimed Stranger is a racist and/or misogynistic work. I just didn’t see either of those. I think of myself as very supportive of equality of men and women of all races, and even philogyny to some extent, for all that woman do for us, and I felt this book exalted women. Recall how smart and dynamic Jubal’s assistants were, for example. They all had a firecracker-quick wit and never buckled under pressure. They did whatever their desire was and only obeyed their boss Jubal, because they where his employees, and they cared for him as a father figure. I found no objectification or sexism.

I agree that there is an overabundance of sex in this novel. But I am quite aware of the double standard in society where promiscuous men are applauded while women are called “slutty”. In Stranger in a Strange Land, some of the women are quite promiscuous, and yet are never judged, but seen as loving, and never forced by the men in the novel to do so. As I said, I don’t feel women should be treated as objects by any means, but this book shows a woman can have sex with whoever she pleases and it is nobody’s right to judge. I cannot find the misogyny in that. Heinlein wrote several novels that portray how strong and equal to if not better than men, that women are. See Friday for one example.

As for the terrible comment Jill makes about rape in one passage, I think that shows how wrong Jill’s way of thinking was at the time, and is not to be taken as Heinlein’s belief. If an author writes about how a Nazi character thinks “Jews are evil”, that does NOT mean the author believes this. He is simply exposing the character’s own terribly wrong ideology. Whether these are the author’s views, speaking through his/her characters, or not, cannot be judged by reading their work of fiction. This is likewise with Jill’s comments about gay men, whom she calls “poor in-betweeners”.

As for racism in this novel, all I can say is that I cannot find any! Some of Heinlein’s novels do sadly have racist elements, like The Day After Tomorrow (which reflects the common thinking at the time I’m afraid), but Stranger in a Strange Land is not one of them! See Ender’s Game if you want a REAL racist pile of… ugh, let’s not get me started on that.

One Caveat: If you are a Christian, you may find this book blasphemous or at the least quite critical of Christianity toward the last half of the story, but even many Christian friends say they really enjoyed it by treating it as just a story and its not an attack on their own beliefs. That said, if you do not take kindly to criticism of your belief system, you may want to avoid this one.

The characters in Stranger in a Strange Land are both well developed and intriguing, and you don’t have to subscribe to any of the ideals outlined in this book in order to benefit from the sparking off of a good deal of deep thought and introspection. I recommend this book to any adult that wishes to broaden their exposure to philosophical ideas or just read a great book.

I’d like to, quit typically, end this review with a quote from the book–One that makes me tear up every time I read it:

I’ve found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much… because it’s the only thing that’ll make it stop hurting. -Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land-

Lately I’ve just been working and finishing up classes. The mall on campus (long stretch of grass, not shopping mall) is once again the constant home of one of the many slacklines owned by those of us that love the discipline. I love having a break between classes and going out there to find that there is always a line set up. Sometimes one of us will put one up, go to class, and come back later, knowing that our friends will make sure nobody steals it while we’re gone. I’ve made some really cool friends through slacklining over the last few years. Amme hasn’t had a chance to do it since the beginning of the summer, but she’s gotten really good.

I’ve also started climbing again at the rock gym here on campus. Its free for students which is awesome, and I still fit my shoes so that’s a bonus. I can’t climb at the level I used to, but I still know how to move and not overexert myself. I’m making progress slowly.

The leaves were all messed up this fall. We had a couple of bouts of cold weather that caused some of the trees to change and others not to, so we didn’t get the nice vistas of dense autumnal hues. Instead there were a few beautiful trees surrounded by clumps of green or dead brown. This made for some nice contrast, but I didn’t get any good landscape photos. I’ll have the photos up on Flickr within a week. I also have some shots from UrbExing around the former Loring Air Force Base on there, so be sure to check those out.

They include our trip to the old Nuclear Weapons Storage Area, the first of its kind in the US! There are no weapons there now, of course, but you can really see how hard they were hiding the stuff from satellite surveillance and how thick the walls and vault doors were. Its pretty nuts thinking back on it. There are also photos of some of the Oakfield Station in Maine, for you railfans.

Classes are good, I’m finishing up my second degree and can’t wait for it to be done. I want to WORK not have all of my time monopolized while I pay for it. I’d love to start my own company but I need to learn more about the process. I also need the free time for it. I’ve let friends down in the past by trying to take on projects that I didn’t have time for and I hate myself for doing that even though I’m putting schooling first.

Amme and I went to NY for her cousin Subee’s wedding. We had a great time; it’s been so long since we saw a lot of the family down there. I have the photos up here and here. BTW: the facebook photo resizing algorithm makes my photos look all artifact-y. If you want a high quality photo from that album email me and I’ll send you one.

I have two wisdom teeth coming in. One of them is already exposed and is currently stopping me from opening my mouth all the way. It makes eating difficult. It just started doing that out of the blue, else I would have had it extracted by now. I went to the dentist at the healthcare center here that has a sliding pay scale since I don’t have insurance and it’s very affordable. They did a panoramic digital x-ray of my jaw, which was very cool. Our vet uses a digital x-ray as well. They can open the image in a viewer and change the contrast, levels, and zoom in and out to get infinitely better images than the film and developer x-rays. That visit was fast and cheap, but to get my tooth extracted the next opening they have is in the end of January! I won’t be able to open my mouth at all by then, so I have to look elsewhere for an oral surgeon. I’m homing someone has an opening within a week. I’m tired of eating soup and cutting things into toddler-sized pieces.

Amme has been taking good care of me though. I hope I take just as good care of her. I’m anxious to get on with life and make a name for myself, but as long as we have each other I can never be discontented. I could move out to the woods, build us a house, and just provide for us both and be happy forever.

Fortunately there are some great monospaced fonts that do scale up nicely. In my experience, it is important for me to use both my own favorite fixed-width fonts, and the great fixed-width ones below. This is because at small sized, most vector-based fonts like some below look fantastic at larger sizes, like on web pages or in print, but look fuzzy or blurry in the 8-12pt range in notepad++, gedit, etc. Conversely, my favorite bitmap based fonts only look good at one size, usually in the 8-10pt range, and are pixelated and blocky at larger sizes.

With that in mind, I present to you some smooth and delicious monospaced fonts that retain high legibility (slashed or dotted zeros, 1, l, I distinction, etc).

Inconsolata

The font that actually started me on this post was Raph Levien’s excellent Inconsolata. Spurred on by Luc(as) de Groot’s Consolas (below), Raph created a free and open source monospaced font that renders nicely at high resolutions, and looks great in print:

Inconsolata is still in development and lacks bold/italic styles, but is already in fine shape. Its major drawback is that it currently has no “hinting” support, so it doesn’t play well with Microsoft’s Clear Type technology. Everyone else should find it renders quite nicely, however.

Consolas

Developed by Luc(as) de Groot, Consolas is another nice-looking fixed-width font with good distinction between visually similar characters. Consolas is included in Windows Vista and MS Office 2007, and if you’re using only the included fonts on Vista its the only one with a slashed zero!

Consolas has full hinting instructions and works great with Clear Type.

Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

Bitstream Vera Sans Mono is a variant of Bitstream Vera. It was designed by Jim Lyles and also has full hinting instructions. Bitstream Vera was released for use under an open source license agreement with the GNOME Foundation, so all you free/OSS developers are good to go!

I know Nyrath has his own custom made font, and it’s actually one I use frequently in notepad2 and notepad++. So, what are you guys’/gals’ favorite programming fonts? I’d love to know about any other monospaced fonts I’ve not come across yet.

By the way, euicho.com is currently not section 508 compliant, but it will be very shortly. Its something I’ve been meaning to take care of. In the meantime, at least it does render very nicely in lynx.

In other news: iPhone 3G! FARK YEAH!

Oh, and for all you haters: Lowest price for a new Tom Tom GPS = $199.
Lowest price for a new iPhone with GPS (and phone, music, video, monkey ball, etc…) = $199. And yes, it will have turn by turn directions in the near future.

Gadget pr0n will follow once I get my invisible shield on it

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Garfield Minus Garfield consistently makes me do a literal LOL (as opposed to the false LOL where we are actually laughing inside or LI). Underneath the humor, however, is a mixture of sadder emotions. View at least several strips and you may notice it becomes an intensely surreal experience, like the act of removing Garfield peels back a bright and happy layer exposing the intensely lonely life of a desparate, bi-polar middle-aged bachelor.

Dan Walsh has revealed the deeper side of Jim Davis’ art, a side that not even Davis himself realized knew was coming through his work. Walsh has shown us it’s not always about a silly hedonistic cat making a straight man of his owner. It’s about the human condition.

I am reminded of a powerfully insightful quote by the great Robert Anson Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land; one that makes me tear up almost every time I recall it:

I’ve found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much… because it’s the only thing that’ll make it stop hurting.

Garfield Minus Garfield makes us laugh because the loneliness and strangeness of Jon Arbuckle’s life hurts us, and may even strike something personal in our own lives.

It’s funny and it’s brilliant, and you should go read some the next time you have a spare moment.