Work In Progress

How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime, by Roger Corman, is an interesting look at low budget film making.

If you find many of Corman's films interesting, it's worth a read, because he talks about a lot of them (I suspect that many of them are pretty interchangeable).

One of the things that I never realized about Corman films is how fast they're made. Very often the scripts didn't exist until Corman saw a set that he wanted to use (because it was available cheaply) and would have a story which uses the set written in a week or two. It explains why so many of his films are so bad in so many ways.

That being said, having seen a fair number of Roger Corman films, it is surprising how many of them have at least a few good ideas or a few bits of quality in them. Overall I found the book somewhat interesting and don't regret the money I paid for it or the time I spent reading it.

The end of Roger Corman's book, "How I made 100 Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime" had an interesting twist. He mention a film of his in which the monster wins. It's an idea he came up with after doing a lot of movies in which the monster is killed with electricity, fire, water, radiation, etc. This time, he said, the monster will win.

I will grant that it's an interesting twist, but the reasoning behind it is telling. Coreman got bored with doing the endings like he usually did, so he did something different. It's a refrain one hears often enough, "I need a change". Now, in this movie I think that it worked (I didn't see the movie, but Corman described it). All of the main characters were bad guys, and so in a way the monster was the good guy, and the good guys won.

This is a very important part of movies. Movies can have many roles, just as any tool can have many roles. Movies are used for all sorts of things in different cultures. From what I've seen of Italian films, they're mean to stimulate the gladiator master in all of us — brutal and derranged, they make us remember what it must have been like to be a roman sacking and destroying everything in his path (that image usually goes to vikings, but the romans were much more efficient at it). From what I've seen of French films, there must be an insufficient number of suicides in the country and the film industry's job is to bolster it up (I kid slightly; as I understand it the French have an obsession with pessimism and like to immerse themselves in it because they have a deep-seated need to try to overcome it, or something like that). But American films are — when they're good — the best because their purpose is to lift the spirits and give strength to the weak. American movies are about how life can overcome death, the weak can overcome the strong, and that everything isn't for nothing.

Anyhow, (I apologize for this post being so rambling, but I'm rather tired and haven't fully woken up yet), I've often wondered at this mentality — the idea that decisions are made not on the basis of quality but of being different. Of course there's a natural human impulse to it. That's understandable enough. What I don't understand is why people not only admit it, but talk about it like it's good. Boredom isn't quite thought of as a virtue a virtue (though some people occasionally try to make it out as a sign of the virtue of brilliance), but it really should be thought of as a vice. As G.K. Chesterton once observed, "There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person."

For the first few hours of their journey, neither Arcelia nor John said anything to the other. John was being respectful and Arcelia was far too caught up in trying to figure out what she thought and felt. Certainly she knew her father and mother well enough to know that they were not saints, so she did not condemn John irreversibly. Yet the bonds of blood are strong, and she couldn't easily forgive the deaths of her parents, either.

The whole situation was simply too surreal for Arcelia to react sensibly. There was in any event nothing Arcelia could do about her situation now, having placed herself into the care of this handsome, if strange, assassin. She had been thinking about what little she knew happened for so long that she needed something to distract her from it. She couldn't stop any other way. Resolving to find her distraction in conversation, she finally broke the silence by asking, "So how long have you been an assassin?"

John was a little startled by the abruptness of her question, but he wasn't really surprised by it. Death and grief were his line of work, after all. Looking back at her, he replied "It's nearly twenty years." He pushed on.

Having built up the courage to start a conversation, she wasn't going to let him leave it at that. "Do you like it?"

John stopped walking, and slowly turned to face her. He looked at her face for a moment, almost as if looking for something. She returned his gaze. Not knowing what he was looking for she didn't know how to show it, and didn't even know if she wanted to. She held her expression and waited. She was determined that he would not embarrass her into looking away. At length, he spoke.

"God forgive me. I do."

Arcelia did not take long to reply, "I think that I understand. A while ago you spoke of wanting to be a dragon. I do kind of know what you mean. But to me, you are a dragon. You want to fly, but I'm as far from you as you are from flying." John was silent, listening to her. She continued, "I can't imagine that being a dragon very nice. When you breath fire, you have to breath it somewhere, and fire always burns. But even when it's unpleasant, it must be fun. Even when it's painful, it must be exhilarating."

John looked at Arcelia with respect. A small smile crept over his face. "It is."

He let a moment pass, then asked her, "And what of you? Do you like what your life has been?"

Sometimes two people who don't know each other become intimate simply because they didn't get to know each other more slowly. Such was the friendship forming between Arcelia and John. While they were forming it, neither was willing to slacken the pace.

"You know," she replied, "it really doesn't matter, does it?"

"How do you mean?" John asked.

"I'm starting a new life today. Or maybe I will start it once we get to town. Or maybe I've already started it." She paused for a moment as she jumped over a fallen tree. "Whichever. I wonder what life it should be?"

It may seem strange that Arcelia should be so intimate with the man who just killed her parents. If so, in her defense when the world has turned upside down, the most comfortable position can be standing on your head. It's a sort of humility: when the world goes mad, it may just know something which you don't. It's also true that John was a handsome man, and it's human nature to trust good looking people.

"What should any of us do with our life?" John said thoughtfully. "You know, I did once meet a man who knew what he should do with his life, but he was a monk. Somehow that seems a bit like cheating, doesn't it?"

"How so?"

"Because his answer to the question, 'what should I do in this world?' was 'nothing'. Oh, I don't mean that he made the wrong choice. He's certainly a good monk. It just doesn't seem very helpful as an example for the rest of us."

"Yes. If the purpose of his life was to serve as an example for the rest of us in being worldly, he certainly made a mess of it." Arcelia was feeling quite playful — a little drunk on the feeling of freedom that comes with starting over before the hard work of actually starting sets in. "How do you know that we all shouldn't renounce the world?" Arcelia was actually smiling now.

"As Benedict said in Much Ado About Nothing, 'the world must be peopled'."

"Yes," Arcelia conceded, "but there's more than one way to renounce the world. You hardly live a normal life."

"Do you think that I'm celibate, then?"

Arcelia thought for a moment. "I honestly don't know. You'd certainly be more picturesque if you were. Well, maybe not. I could see you being a lady's man, too. Endlessly bumping from one woman to another and getting nothing but physical release, searching without knowing it for a woman who was more than just a body — that would work too."

John just smiled. "I try to know what I'm looking for. Things are easier to find that way. But I guess that you're right, I'm not normal."

"I guess that you won't be much help, then."

"Probably not."

Arcelia was now not sure how to continue the conversation and stayed silent for a few minutes, hoping that John might think of something to say. At length, he did.

"The obvious way to start is to consider what you're good at. That's also the bad way to start."

It was Arcelia's turn to smile. "You're going to have to explain that one."

"What you're good at is just an accident of your history. You're good at piano because there was a piano in the house. You learned to dance because you admired someone you happen to see two months before you might have seen a kung fu movie if you weren't at dance class. What you're good at is a little bit you but mostly it's everyone else. We talk about making our way in life, but mostly we make each other's ways. Dr Frankenstein had nothing on the guy who taught me to shoot. If you really want to decide for yourself, start at the end and work your way backwards. The first question is what you want written on your tombstone. The second question is what you need to do to convince people to write it. Once you've answered that, you know what to do with your life."

Arcelia considered this for a few moments, then asked, "And what do you want written on your tombstone?"

John grinned and said, "Look behind you."

John laughed and Arcelia joined him. It was good to laugh.

They continued on in silence for some time. Conversations are fragile things, and neither Arcelia nor John wanted to break the one they were having. They also both had a lot on their minds. John is contemplative by nature, and there were practical matters which he had to pay attention to as well. Arcelia had asked some questions which she would soon need to have answers to. Neither really noticed how much time had passed when Arcelia asked, "So... is it difficult to learn to be an assassin?"

John thought about it for only a moment before replying, "That really depends on how long you plan to survive for."

Arcelia believed him, but somehow it didn't seem right to just agree with him, so she said, "Is striking from the shadows really that dangerous an occupation?"

"Oh, don't get me wrong. Even and idiot can last for a little while. The thing is, most idiots do. Killing people for money is not usually a good way to make friends, but it's a wonderful way to make enemies."

"I can imagine. Do you think that I'm too old to start learning?"

"There isn't really such a thing as too old. I mean, if you're sixty you're probably not going to be doing a lot of acrobatics, but acrobatics are rarely a good idea."

Arcelia smiled. "You mean that the movies aren't realistic? That's rather dissapointing to hear."

John smiled back. "If the movies were realistic, they'd have to make the movies differently. No one pays a movie theater to see what they could watch on the news."

Arcelia considered this for a moment, then got to the point. "So, do you think that I should give it a try?"

John wasn't surprised by the question. "That depends on why you want to," he said.

Arcelia wasn't surprised either. She looked very serious and said, "Because I want to be a dragon too."

John considered this a moment.

"Let's get to town first."

I've been thinking a lot about zomies lately as I'm starting to put together ideas for my screenplay for a zombie story, and I'm really having difficulty figuring out the background. I know that plenty of people would say, "who cares how zombies work, the important thing is the story", and in a sense they're right. But at the same time, it rarely hurts to actually have some idea what you're doing, and most zombie movies are pretty awful movies, so there's little evidence to back up the "screw it, let's just get on with the screaming" approach.

There are a few problems with more metabolically realistic zombies. If they actually can move for about 6 days using just the energy local to the muscles (which is probably an over-estimate), there's still the question of what's going to power the rest of the brain. Human brains typically require an awful lot of glucose, which will be in short supply in an organism without a working circulatory system (of course, it's not required that the circulatory system stop working, but if it was necessary zombies could bleed to death). That's not necessarily a requirement of all brains — cats eat nothing but meat and seem to work OK — but it's still a problem. Zombies might only last maybe 12 hours.

The problem with shrinking the zombie duration significantly is that if it's not longer than the incubation period for the virus (or whatever) that turns a person into a zombie, you can't really get the massive swarms. On the other hand, you would get waves of zombies, possibly starting up again every night (with say a 24 hour incubation period and an 8 hour unlife span).

But all of this is somewhat beside the point. The main question is just this: what makes zombies interesting? The simplest answer is that the best zombie movies are about people struggling against difficult but possible odds, where zombies are just a background. Maybe that's true — if so then the zombies are really quite ancillary to zombie stories. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that zombie movies are about what a small group of people can accomplish if they have enough courage not to be terrified into doing stupid things. It is true that in many zombie movies what gets people is their fear. (Part of the problem is that a lot of zombie movies are variants on slasher flicks in which grotesque death is meant to be enjoyed, and some of them are horror movies in which the only point is to be scared.)

But when you get down to it, zombies are really cut-rate enemies. They're the most pathetic form of undead available, really. Weak, slow, and stupid, they generally only kill people when they surprise them or when they attack in substantial numbers. If your heroes aren't idiots, you have to go for the huge numbers, but then you get a chicken-and-egg problem. How on earth do you plausibly get large numbers of zombies? Unless they get created en-masse, logic generally dictates that if you start with a small number of zombies, they'll be found out and turned into a smaller number of zombies.

If you start with some virus which can actually be airborne, then the problem is how you keep the heroes from getting infected.

And it's just a mere detail how zombies can manage to recognize each other (with whom they're perfectly docile) and why they want to kill people.

There's got to be some sort of explanation which can hold it all together, but I'm kind of stumped. And this isn't even wanting to come up with a really scientific-sounding explanation for what doesn't exist and probably can't. I'd be fairly happy if I could figure out a unified set of traits for zombies — how does it spread, how long does it take, what do zombies want, how do they move, etc?

They stayed, staring at each other, for nearly a minute. It was Arcelia who broke the silence.

"Who are you? And what, exactly, have you done?"

"Call me Ramirez. What I've done, depending on how you would like to look at it, is avenge over two decades of brutality and barbarism or kill your parents and the seventeen men your father had hired as guards (incidentally, it is convenient that your maid visits her family every third Sunday).

"For what it's worth," he added, "I'm sorry for causing you suffering."

After a few moments, Arcelia broke the silence again, "And you want me to go with you?"

"I never said that I wanted anything. I made you an offer. I do think that you would be wise to accept it, but that doesn't mean that I do — or don't — want you to."

Almost impulsively, Arcelia asked, "Well, what do you want?" Like all human beings, she had the instinct to seize the initiative, even if she had no idea what to do with it once she had it.

John smiled, his eyes twinkling devilishly. "I want to be a dragon. I want a body the size of a school bus and a tail longer than a snake. I want wings the size of the sails on a ship, teeth sharper than a needle, and breath hotter than hell. I want to soar among the clouds like a bird and look down on all the beautiful world. I want to be more than a man and have none of Man's vices."

Arcelia didn't know how to respond. She wanted control of the situation, or the conversation, or something. She couldn't think of how to get it. Finally, she said, "Whether or not I accept your offer, if you're so concerned about my welfare, please don't joke with me."

"I was quite serious. That is what I want. That it's not terribly relevant to the moment is true, but it's your business why you want to know this now, not mine."

"Why are you being so literal?"

"Why aren't you?"

"Why have you offered to bring to me civilization?"

"Because you are in danger."

"Because of you!"

"Exactly."

"Well, then, if you were so concerned about me why did you put me in danger?"

"Because I could also get you out of it."

Arcelia paused and thought for a moment. His responses were all reasonable — but for an insane situation. Was it really possible that he did what he claimed? Was it really possible that her family and all of their guards were dead? She hadn't really started to believe it yet, but it was really starting to worry her that no one had come in response to her screams earlier. Enriqué should have come running within a few seconds. Could everyone be in the far side of the house for some reason? Could they have left her all alone in her room and this crazy stranger wandered in somehow?

"I take it that you won't mind if I walk around and make sure that you're telling the truth about my family?"

The idea that this strange man could have been telling the truth about her family had not really sunk in, and she was mostly concerned with keeping him calm while she found out what was really going on.

"That's as you please. I hope that you have a strong stomach."

It disconcerted her that he didn't mind. She had expected that he would find some excuse to keep her from looking around. Still, she had to find out what was going on and she couldn't be in any more danger leaving her room than she was staying there with "Ramirez".

Arcelia slowly got up and put on her night robe, keeping her eyes on Ramirez. She had no real reason for watching him — if he was going to jump her he could more easily have done that before waking her up.

She didn't admit it to herself, but she watched him because of his calm confidence. He had turned the world on its side, but he was standing upright in the tumult he caused. He was at once an angel and a devil, and whichever side predominated he seemed, at least, to know what was going on.

Arcelia slowly walked out of her room. She had half-expected to see corpses in the hallway, and was a little relieved that there was not so much as a bloody footprint. She walked past the two rooms reserved for her sisters when they visit and went to her parents room. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open. Scarcely a moment later, she shut her eyes and turned from the grizzly scene, driving her head into her hands as if she could undo what she saw if she just pressed hard enough.

"No... No..." she said, as if to someone. After a moment, she opened her eyes and looked for John. She felt many things, but above all she was confused. Grief, understanding, even anger — all these things had to wait until she figured out what was going on now.

She hadn't heard him come after her, but he was only a few feet behind her. He was just standing there, with a look somewhere between compassionate and curious, respectfully silent. Arcelia stared into his eyes. She swallowed and took a deep breath, preparing to speak. It was some minutes before she could speak, though. Every time she opened her mouth to try no words would come.

At last she said, quietly, "So it is true?"

"Yes," he said gently.

"Do I really have a choice?"

"Yes."

"Do you really consider dying in the jungle to be a choice?"

"Yes, though it is not certain that on your own, you would die. Nothing in this world is certain until it happens."

"You're quite the philosopher."

John spoke in the same gentle voice, but there was a hint of a smile on his face: "Yes."

Arcelia sighed. She almost laughed at the absurdity of her situation.

"What should I do?" she asked. "What would you do, if you were me?"

"If I were you," he said thoughtfully, "I would accept my offer.

"If I meant to do anything bad to you, I would surely have done it by now. If I wanted to harm you, there was no reason to wake you up. Even if i wanted to kidnap you and deliver you to some vengeful associates of mine — incidentally, there's no one that I know of who holds a grudge against you — even if I had wanted to kidnap you, I could have just tied your hands and forced you to walk behind me.

"So, all things considered, it wouldn't seem very likely that I was being deceptive in my offer, or at least, if I was, my deception would be too subtle to discover just by thinking about it. So I would accept.

"But what shall you do?"

Arcelia thought for a moment. "I'll come with you." Having decided to trust him, at least for now, she figured that she might as well ignore her anger. "So, what now?"

"You should pack some rugged clothing in a bag. Long pants and long-sleeved shirts, if you have them. Also socks, underwear, etc. Also, you'll want to bring money, as it will be useful to you once we get to town. I'll carry the bag for you, so it's OK if it's heavy, though please don't be ridiculous about it."

Arcelia did as John suggested and within half an hour they were off.

I'll call him John. He never gives out his real name, so one name is as good as another. He is, among other things, an assassin, and a damn good one. Actually, he's the best there is, though of course you won't find anyone who will either confirm or deny that.

Now, assassins are a poorly understood lot. If you close your eyes and try to picture an assassin, you'll probably come up with the image of a man casually setting up his sniper rifle on the top of the building next to his mark. If killing people was so easy, we'd have to draft our political leaders by lottery rather than elect them by vote. The world of the skilled assassin is a very deadly one, often more dangerous for the predators than for their prey. Assassins spend most of their time hunting their own kind.

It was doing exactly that which took up most of the time John spent on the execution of Carlos Ramirez y Fuentes, the erstwhile dictator in all but title of a small rural patch of one of the less prosperous of the South American countries. He wasn't too bad, as such overlord-thugs go, but then being beaten with a stick isn't bad as vicious beatings go. However little his conscience bothered him, he did know that there were people who would, so he spared little expense in fortifying his villa.

A dozen armed men patrolled the edges of Carlos' extensive property, and there were another four inside who stuck close to Carlos day and night. They were not high quality assassins, but then most of the paid killers in this world are mere thugs — simple men whose one great intellectual discovery was how to amputate their moral compass.

Of course John attacked in the night. Those prepared for the night always have an advantage in it. This advantage would largely have been lost if the Carlos' guards had their dogs at hand while walking the patrols, but luckily for John the dogs had all been sick for the past two days from some bad dog food. Either that or an inhaled neurotoxin the dogs were exposed to sniffing around the grounds. The symptoms are quite difficult to tell apart.

The guards were very nervous without their dogs, of course. Any change in routine is enough to set a bodyguard on edge. They had largely calmed down by the second day. John always liked to say that Iago's observations about reputation go double for fear: it often comes without cause and goes without reason. Not that their lost fear would have done them any good, but their reduced caution made John's job easier.

The first two (they patrolled in pairs) were not much trouble. A pair of crossbow bolts silenced them forever. The rest were easier; with a gap in the patrol there was more time to work on the tail end of the snipped circle. Within half an hour the twelve professional killers who guarded the property had become professional worm food. It was the first time any of them had ever given food to the hungry.

Though it was safe to walk up the driveway, John never took risks he could avoid. He had dispatched the sniper who sat at one end of the property and watched the patrols over the patrols every night with his scope. The last words he heard before he felt the bullet pierce his skull were the almost apologetic explanation, "It's a bad idea to return to the same place by habit." John had hidden the walkie-talkie in the tree next to the forked branch the sniper sat in every night. It was unnecessary, but John always had a soft place in his heart for snipers. They played a hard and lonely game, and when they lose it, they deserve to know why they lost.

John had killed that sniper, but what if he missed a second one? He had never made that mistake in his one hundred and thirty eight jobs, but if there was going to be a first time, he'd rather not make it easy for the guy.

The electricity going out was not an unusual occurrence and the well maintained diesel generator kicked on almost instantly. It sputtered out nearly as quickly since John's bullet cut the fuel line almost where it entered the engine. In a few moments John was inside the house and eliminated the house guards. Private rooms may be more comfortable, but they are less safe than shared quarters. Within ten minutes of entering, John had made his way inside the bedroom to where the man and his wife slept. Silently he drew the long, sharp sword from its velvet-lined sheath. Moving with silent grace, he came to the foot of the bed with his sword poised and looked into the face of the doomed man.

John almost thought that it would be a pity that this man who had ordered so many tortures and painful executions would himself die a quick and painless death, but he checked himself. No. He grimly smiled to himself. I will not make Hamlet's mistake, he thought. I am executioner, not judge; God may decide whether Carlos Ramirez y Fuentes should suffer, it is only my job to hasten that decision. In a flash John brought his sword down separating the dictator's head from his body. At the same time as Almira Ramirez y Sanchez was startled from her sleep, John leaped catlike over the bed and twisting in mid-air pulled his sword out of the mattress, landed next to the woman who just sat up and continuing the sweep of his sword sent Almira to join her husband. Her jealous spite had deprived too many beautiful young girls of their ears and nose because Carlos had looked at them longingly, too many women of their lives because Carlos flirted with them.

John cleaned his sword and re-sheathed it. There was still one task left. The Ramirez' daughter, Arcelia, had no hand in her parents cruelty and no one really wish her ill. Certainly no one who had commissioned John to execute the elder Ramirez, at least.

He walked into her room, in which she lay asleep, and inspected it (and her) carefully for hidden weapons and trap triggers. When he was satisfied that she was completely unarmed, he leaned against her dresser and said, simply, "Arcelia."

She awoke slowly at first, but then with a start when she realized that there was a strange man in her room. He held his hand up to signal that she should be quiet, but she screamed anyway. Pulling the blanket protectively around her, she huddled up in the corner of her be farthest from the strange man and waited for the guards her scream would fetch.

After a few moments, he broke the silence, "There is no one here to come running to you, Arcelia, unless you can scream loud enough to wake the dead."

She merely looked at him with fearful eyes. He was probably lying just to get her to keep quiet. She screamed again, "Help! Help!" Where were the guards? She cowered back a little, and pulled the sheets a little tighter, though he hadn't moved.

"Since all I want to do is talk with you, we might as well start now as wait a few minutes for no one to come."

She started at him in pure fear. Who was this man, and could he be telling the truth? How could he be telling the truth? Her father had over a dozen men working on the grounds. Could they call be dead?

"What do you want with me?"

"What does any man want of any woman? That you listen to me and be rational."

She flashed him a burning look. The circumstances might be terrifying, but she was not going to take a sexist joke lightly, all the same.

He chuckled. "If you don't want certain answers, don't ask open-ended questions. Anyhow, for your sake I'll be brief." He drew a deep breath, then continued, "Arcelia, you're a woman alone in dangerous country. For perhaps obvious reasons I had to disable the telephones, so you can't call for help. I don't suggest trying to shout to your neighbors, either. Your father picked this area for his retirement because of its isolation. Unless you can talk with animals you'd find it a very one-sided conversation.

"My offer is this: I can simply leave you here, and you can find your way to wherever you want to go carrying whatever weapons you can find in the house, or you can go unarmed and I'll escort you until you're there and safe."

She stared at him incredulously.

I recently got a Dell D610 laptop for the purpose of writing. This will actually serve two purposes; the first is that since it's a substantial investment, it's my commitment to writing. I'm actually going to do it. The second purpose is that since my writing is primarily going on here, on the blog, it will let me use the software and get a good feel for how it is to use it — it's often quite easy to tell software which the programmer has used from software which the programmer hasn't used.

Anyhow, I'd like to take this opportunity to recommend linux on the D610. It's not perfect, but the D610 is a nice laptop (comfortable, good performance, long battery life) and while it's not trivial to get linux up, it's actually not bad. The Sarge install was very straight forward (you need to use the 2.4 kernel for some reason). After that, download and compile your own 2.6 kernel (2.6.12.5 as of the writing of this post), patch it with this patch from this page, and then install the kernel. (I actually now find it easiest to build with "make-kpkg kernel_image" and then just dpkg -i the resulting deb. Note: you'll need to edit your grub config and set kopt_2_6=root=/dev/sdaN ro (Where N is your root partition), because in 2.6 SATA drives are scsi drives whereas in 2.4 they're IDE drives. (Incidentally, I just noticed that the guy who wrote that page helpfully provides his kernel image. I'll try to remember to do that too.)

I did have to go to debian unstable to get an xorg package, but after that it was easy. Just use the i810 driver and the 915resolution program (this is explained in the linked page) to enable 1400x1050 as a valid resolution and X works fine from that package. (Note: sometimes after suspending to ram the glidepoint gets jumpy, but so far it seems that suspending again will fix that eventually.)

the intel 2200 wifi card works great, of course; all you have to do is install the ieee80211 driver, then the driver and firmware (note: just unzip the firmware into /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware, and compile both drivers with "make && make install"). I prefer to use wpasupplicant as it's easier to configure preferences for, but waproamd is a bit easier to get going (they're the daemons which scan for available wifi and choose one).

Anyhow, there's not much point in me going on because this isn't detailed enough to be really useful nor high enough level to be interesting, but the long and short of it is that while it's a bunch of work to get a D610 working with linux, it's work and not hair-pulling. I suspect that this D610 will be a lot like the inspiron 9200 — a lot of work for a day or two, followed by a laptop which works well.

(Note: I'm really looking forward to the glorious days when it will be possible to make SATA hard drives spin down.)

Anyhow, if I get the time to write a step-by-step guide, I'll post update this post.

William Goldman's sequel to Adventures in the Screen Trade, Which Lie Did I Tell? was a really interesting book and an enjoyable read, more so than the first one. There are two main reasons for this.

The first is that being 26, I hadn't seen many of the movies discussed in the first book, and so the references were more abstract. This effect will obviously vary with the age of the reader, but I suspect that the audience for people considering a career in the screen trade is not that old, simply because few people take up new careers in their 40s and 50s (I find it very reassuring that some people do, and many of the ones who do do so quite successfully).

The other, more significant reason, is that Goldman matured. When he wrote Adventures, he was 52, whereas Which Lie was written when Goldman was 69. It's generally been my experience that people in their sixties tend to be either a lot more crotchety, or a lot more mellow, than themselves in their 40s and 50s. Part of it may be simply getting tired, but I think much more it's that after 40 years of working and worrying, people have seen enough of the world to realize that they don't need to worry nearly as much as they thought that they did when they were younger. Whatever the reason, Goldman does seem much more at peace with hollywood when he started. (I don't mean to give the impression that he praises it; he still observes many of the idiocies and ego-driven problems which go on in hollywood, but he has more of a sense of humor about it.)

In any event, I recommend Which Lie Did I Tell? even more strongly than I did Adventures in the Screen Trade. It's a great complement to the first book — I bought them at the same time and read them together, and I think that I did the right thing. The second doesn't require the first to have been read, but I think that you get more out of them together.

Adventures in the Screen Trade, by William Goldman, is a fascinating look at what being a mainstream hollywood screenwriter is about. I must confess that while I consider myself to have finished it, I've probably only read about 2/3 of it. Written in an extremely personal, conversational style, the portions of it which recount Goldman's experiences are extremely interesting and education, but like C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letter, it's difficult reading. (For those who haven't read that great work of Lewis's, the words are easy, but the emotions are tiring.)

If you're interested at all in mainstream screen writing, or in how the plots of mainstream hollywood movies are made, I heartily recommend it. The plots of mainstream movies are created with a process that only starts with the screenwriter, and Goldman covers this in great depth. Like most human activities, film making is really an ad-hoc affair; a large number of people scramble to get it done and fulfill their own goals as well as they can, and the dynamics of this are varied but Goldman makes them seem understandable.

I was drawn to the book by my interest in screenwriting (I haven't done any yet, but I am quite interested in it) and am quite glad that I bought the book.

It is not natural to human beings to have opponents, so it's no surprise that they tend to do it badly. Well known is the need people have to villify their opponents. It's a natural enough tendency, but still very strange.

A good example of this is the classic example of both sides in a medieval battle claiming that God is on their side.

Still, it's a pity that people can't generally accept the idea that to try to kill people, what's required is not for them to be criminals, but for them to be dangerous. To take a simple example, if I were in the position of the branch of Al Qaeda operating in Iraq (i.e. were brought up as a muslim, had the United States as an enemy, had a populace that was getting lazy and complacent and abandoning virtue for comfort, etc), I might very well act similarly. What of it? The reason that Al Qaeda should be killed is not that they're evil, but that they're dangerous. (That's not to say that Al Qaeda is a bunch of angels, because I gather that by and large they are a bunch of evil bastards.)

It was somewhat easy during the cold war. The government told the population that the russians were a bunch of godless commies, and the russians claimed to be a bunch of godless commies (while we were the decadent capitalist west, while we claimed to be the rich capitalist west), so for once both sides agreed with their mutual descriptions. But despite that, both sides realized that the reason that the other didn't need to be killed was that they weren't that dangerous (more precisely that they were sufficiently non-dangerous that they were tolerable alive and the dangers of eliminating them weren't tolerable).

There's the obvious explanation that everyone likes to think of themselves as story-book virtuous, but I just don't think that people are quite that simple. People are frequently lazy, but they're rarely as simple as they look at (an unsympathetic) glance.