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It has been A Week, including live music! Birthdays! Parades! An AEW PPV! D&D sessions! And the cops coming to my floor four times in the last 13 hours to deal with an aggro dude who probably doesn't have a mother who lives across the hall but claims he does and should therefore be allowed to sleep or binge drink in the hallway!
Some of these things I hope to write about in greater detail later, along with catching up on my rlist. But in the meantime, here's:
What I Finished Reading This Week
Still Life – Ciaran Carson
It would be difficult to overstate how much I love Carson's writing. This is his final collection of poems, written while he was dying of cancer. It's a heavy read, and a beautiful one, and everything I love about Carson's wit, perception, style and ability to weave disparate threads into a unified whole was there till the very last.
The Cuckoo’s Egg – Clifford Stoll
In 1986 Cliff Stoll was an astrophysicist hired by Livermore Labs in Berkeley to administer its networks and write programs for the computers on them. He sat down one day to figure out the source of a 75-cent accounting discrepancy and emerged around a year later as a self-made cybersecurity expert. There is much to enjoy about this book. The story behind the ultimate source of that accounting discrepancy (which I am not at all spoiling) is ripping. Stoll has a knack for explaining computing, telecommunications, and security concepts and terminology in both immediately graspable but accurate ways. And there's a charming nostalgia to revisiting computing in 1986. (Remember when 5.5" floppies were a thing? When people used the phrase "computer jockey" in complete seriousness in everyday conversation?) On the flip side, his "Aw, shucks, I'm just a long-haired California counterculture radical who loves the Grateful Dead and hates the 'Man!'" gets old pretty quickly. Nor is he particularly introspective or self-aware: My dude, you can't rag on the military and the government for being the civil-rights imperiling "System" while getting salty that the cops, the government, and the military won't just tell you someone's name or address or tap their phone despite all the laws against it because you want the information for a "good" reason. (Psst: Everyone will tell you they're doing bad things for "good" reasons.)
So. Read The Cuckoo's Egg for the ripping good story, the fascinating time machine glimpse of computing and the Internet almost thirty years ago, and the plus ça change tension between security and online communication, and do your best to tune out the rest.
What I Am Currently Reading
Looking For The Hidden Folk – Nancy Marie Brown
I've made it just past the prologue on this one.
Blackheart Knights – Laure Eve
I'm 10 percent in and it just hasn't grabbed me yet.
Cyber Persistence Theory – Michael Fisherkeller, Emily Goldman, & Richard Harknett
Just the forward and acknowledgments here.
A Handbook For The Clarke Tin Whistle - Bill Ochs
I haven't read this one in decades, so figured, Why not revisit it?
The Qabalistic Tarot – Robert Wang
I've got about 50 pages to go.
What I’m Reading Next
This week I acquired Joseph Menn's Cult Of The Dead Cow.
これで以上です。
Some of these things I hope to write about in greater detail later, along with catching up on my rlist. But in the meantime, here's:
What I Finished Reading This Week
Still Life – Ciaran Carson
It would be difficult to overstate how much I love Carson's writing. This is his final collection of poems, written while he was dying of cancer. It's a heavy read, and a beautiful one, and everything I love about Carson's wit, perception, style and ability to weave disparate threads into a unified whole was there till the very last.
The Cuckoo’s Egg – Clifford Stoll
In 1986 Cliff Stoll was an astrophysicist hired by Livermore Labs in Berkeley to administer its networks and write programs for the computers on them. He sat down one day to figure out the source of a 75-cent accounting discrepancy and emerged around a year later as a self-made cybersecurity expert. There is much to enjoy about this book. The story behind the ultimate source of that accounting discrepancy (which I am not at all spoiling) is ripping. Stoll has a knack for explaining computing, telecommunications, and security concepts and terminology in both immediately graspable but accurate ways. And there's a charming nostalgia to revisiting computing in 1986. (Remember when 5.5" floppies were a thing? When people used the phrase "computer jockey" in complete seriousness in everyday conversation?) On the flip side, his "Aw, shucks, I'm just a long-haired California counterculture radical who loves the Grateful Dead and hates the 'Man!'" gets old pretty quickly. Nor is he particularly introspective or self-aware: My dude, you can't rag on the military and the government for being the civil-rights imperiling "System" while getting salty that the cops, the government, and the military won't just tell you someone's name or address or tap their phone despite all the laws against it because you want the information for a "good" reason. (Psst: Everyone will tell you they're doing bad things for "good" reasons.)
So. Read The Cuckoo's Egg for the ripping good story, the fascinating time machine glimpse of computing and the Internet almost thirty years ago, and the plus ça change tension between security and online communication, and do your best to tune out the rest.
What I Am Currently Reading
Looking For The Hidden Folk – Nancy Marie Brown
I've made it just past the prologue on this one.
Blackheart Knights – Laure Eve
I'm 10 percent in and it just hasn't grabbed me yet.
Cyber Persistence Theory – Michael Fisherkeller, Emily Goldman, & Richard Harknett
Just the forward and acknowledgments here.
A Handbook For The Clarke Tin Whistle - Bill Ochs
I haven't read this one in decades, so figured, Why not revisit it?
The Qabalistic Tarot – Robert Wang
I've got about 50 pages to go.
What I’m Reading Next
This week I acquired Joseph Menn's Cult Of The Dead Cow.
これで以上です。
Tags:
From:
no subject
This sounds like a good plan! I probably would never have picked up this book on my own, but you make it sound very, very interesting!
From:
no subject
Ha. Cliff Stoll is a semi-regular contributor on
From:
no subject
Glad you mostly enjoyed this crop of books!
From:
no subject
for fuck's sake! You just got rid of one asshole!
From:
no subject
i will be curious for your thoughts on the Cult of the Dead Cow book when you get to it!!!