Wayback Machine

So, the internet wayback machine has proven useful to me time and time again.

If you don't know, the internet wayback machine makes text backups of... pretty much the entire internet. Text only... but really, the text is generally the most devastating loss of a missing website. The site does a really good job of keeping timely backups of changes.

I've used the wayback machine to recover an old site I had made when I was in middle school. I thought I had lost all of it forever... granted what I found was very embarassing and much less amazing than I remembered, but I was very happy to find it again.

I've used the wayback machine to find pages that had been removed, sometimes with information that the webhost was hoping to get off the internet.

And I've used the wayback machine in my job, to find tutorials that had lost their home. I'd follow links to dead pages, but be able to read the information anyway thanks to the wayback machine.

The wayback machine is more than a toy and when you need it, it's definitely nice it's there.

Fun Reads

I found some kinda fun technical reads. They're on the funny side, fun reads. Enjoy.

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/brain/i-chat-therefore-i-am/article_print
Alice and Jaberwocky AI chatting with each other.

http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/The_Complicator_0x27_s_Gloves.aspx
The complicator gloves.

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/12/parabola.html
Steve Yegge writes a story.

http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2007/05/many_worlds_many_treats.php
Teaching Quantum Mechanics to a Dog

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html
A Real Hacker. This one is classic, but I needed to add it anyway.

Some Funny Links

Today, I (probably stupidly) gave away the link to my blog to more people. To make up for the low quality of my previous posts, I offer some of the funnier links I've come across. Of course, they are probably the kind of humor that only I'd enjoy. But at least I tried. Yeah, these are all pretty old.

General
An old He-Man storybook with commentary
English Papers
How stupid Superfriends is looking back. Specifically, the Riddler.
Retitled Romance Novels

++ Images
Did I get the job?
Find X
My favorite web comic strip.
Bunny

# Some Programming Humor
1. Stupid Hacker
2. Evolution of a Software Engineer
3. Clock in Perl

Quotation of the day: "I like to throw sandwiches at the homeless. It satisfies both my altruistic and sadistic urges."

Good Free Reads

Stories are an important part of life. Not only are they entertaining, but they can effect your life if you let them. A good story will not only spark your imagination, but will give you new pespectives about the world. Of course, there are a lot of times where stories just take too long to read. I had a friend who brought books to work to read which he never ended up liking. It took months to finish each book and along the way my friend would lose interest. Good short stories would be way better for short bursts of reading, so I suggested some to him and he seemed to enjoy them a lot more. It worked well. And so I'll share with the internet in general.

The following is a list of online stories (that probably don't justify this really long introduction.) Although a bit on the computer geeky side, these are all stories that I think are especially good reads (which is why I wanted to share them.) They are all free, excellent quick reads that focus on ideas and characters rather than visualization and are located on fairly unsuspicious urls. In other words, they're ideal for fun short break or lunch time reading. If you know of anything else you think I should add to this list, please please please e-mail me. ^_^


Stories

(1) Orson Scott Card
Without doubt, Orson Scott Card is my favorite author. At his website, many short stories are provided. Here are my favorites.
   (a) Atlantis

It's very long and takes a bit before it's interesting, but it's really good once it does. If you've read Pastwatch, you might think you already read this... but you haven't, keep reading.

   (b) Ender's Game

If you like the book and haven't read this, I think it's still worthwhile. If you haven't heard of Ender's Game... after reading this, I'm sure you'll want to pick up the full novel.

   (c) Homeless in Hell

It's a Christmas story about an interesting interpretation of Hell and Santa Clause.

   (d) Missed

It's kinda on the sad side about a guy coping with death, please keep that in mind. Quite short though. One short break's worth.

   (e) Prior Restraint

This is a pretty interesting story, but I can't say anything about it without kind of ruining it.

(2) Neal Stephenson
   (a) Jipi and the Paranoid Chip

Lots of very cool ideas, flow of thoughts, and character interaction. As with Neal Stephenson's stuff, it has an abrupt ending.

   (b) The Great Simolean Caper

Interesting, it touches upon some of his normal themes. Smart characters, cool capers. Ending isn't as abrupt as normal, I think.

(3) Wizardry
Rick Cook wrote a series that blends fantasy with programming. Sound strange? It really isn't that strange and it's actually really quite cool. If you don't like fantasy or programming... then... maybe you should keep away. The first two novels (of five) were made free. They're the best ones anyways, in my opinion. These novels are pretty short, but it should still take a few hours to get through them. Maybe a week of lunches alone.

(4) Suzumiya Haruhi no Yutsu
This is a translation of a series of Japanese light novels. Some chapters are long, but it's not difficult at all to find constant good stopping points. This story is about a normal high school guy trying to deal with a very eccentric classmate who seems to unknowingly control the world and a bunch of supernatural people drawn to her. It's a comedy, mostly. Wiki for more information, but if you like Japanese comics/animation then this is an excellent find. There's also an anime of this series.

(5) Densha Otoko original posts
Umm... this is the black sheep of the list. It's not really a story, although it does tell a story. It's an organized, edited version of a forum thread that chronicles the relationship between an otaku (japanese super geek) at the thread asking for help and a non-otaku woman he had helped. It's pretty fun to read though... a very geeky romance story. Also, a Japanese drama came out of this (also called Densha Otoko), and it's pretty funny.

(6) The Book and the Sword
A great Chinese story to complement the Japanese stories. While the book is very long, the story arcs in the book are actually very episodic and pretty short. The Book and the Sword is a kung fu novel by Jin Yong and it's a really fun read.

(7) The Last Question
I can't really say I like Asimov's writing. I mean, I like his ideas and I do understand why he's important to sci-fi, but I don't like his writing style and so I rarely have fun reading his stuff. The ideas carry this story pretty well though. Since this was a pretty well thought out story, very famous, and a very quick read I decided to list it here. Passes the time on a very slow day, at the very least.


Essays

The following is a list of my favorite online essays. Any programmer and many non-programmers should find many excellent reads in this list. What's here deals primarily with introductions to ideas, examples of thought flows, productivity boosters, and springboards to interesting topics. While some are technical, they don't delve very deeply into the actual technology, instead giving you enough information to decide if you want to devote the time to really learn the topic. With all that said, here's the list. All good reads. If you know of anything else you think I should add to this list, please please please e-mail me. ^_^

(1) Orson Scott Card
Yep, my favorite author again. In addition to novels, he also does a lot of reviews and world commentaries on his web site. I find them interesting, even if I don't agree with everything that he says. These essays were carefully chosen by me as the ones that were the most interesting and thought-provoking to me. Read more of them if you'd like, as most of them are quite interesting.
   (a) Why Making Choices is So Hard

This is the first of OSC's essays that resonated with me. This talks about making choices.

   (b) Freakonomics

A review of Freakonomics, which is an interesting book. It also takes an example from the book and expands upon it, reaching another theory. I like seeing people's thoughts flow and this essay has a lot of very nice examples of thinking about cause and effect, as well as morality.

   (c) Weapons of Mass Destruction

This one provides interesting thoughts about what makes a weapon a WMD as well as some commentary about how OSC thinks the balance in the world works.

   (d) Taking Animals Seriously

This one is very interesting. It contains a lot of ideas about how people think, as well as how different people see the world. It does this by focusing on an autistic author who has devoted her life to making animal slaughterhouses more humane.

(2) Steve Yegge's Essay Collection
Link to his current blog
Steve Yegge writes a lot. His writings made me begin to really improve my programming and they constantly cause me to evaluate the way I think about things. That's why I believe these are very important. I think every programmer should read these because after reading, whether or not you agree, you will have thought a lot. Especially the fresher programmers, like me. Plus, they're pretty entertaining and he says funny stuff. I chose to list my favorite essays. Narrowing them down is difficult since I found it very worthwhile reading them all.
   (a) Tour De Babel
   (b) You Should Write Blogs
   (c) Five Essential Phone Screen Questions
   (d) Practicing Programming
   (e) Saving Time
   (f) Practical Magic

(3) In the Beginning, there was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson
In the End, I find this horribly long, boring in places, and a little out of date. But since I didn't grow up during the era, I ended up learning a huge amount from this. Some of the ideas are interesting, especially if you're pretty new computers. If you really enjoyed this, Mother Earth Mother Board is freely available too. This is another monstrously long essay... it might as well be a novel. It's about Neal Stephenson following FLAG, a global undersea fiber optic cable. He comments a lot about the history and politics around FLAG, as well as about his surroundings. But some spots are way too slow for me.

(4) Joel on Software: Best Software Writing
Essay Links for Best Software Writing
Archive Links
Joel on Software is one of those famous blogs with lots of entries worth reading. I can't think of anything in particular, except maybe this post. He released a compilation of what he felt were the best programming related essays of the year 2005. They really are some of the best software essays. Plus he talked about what makes writing good. The second link I've provided gives links to all the essays he chose. The last link is to his archives for his major blog entries. You may as well just start with the first essay there and work your way down.

(5) Random Tech Essays
   (a) 10 Question, 8 Programmers

This was a very interesting interview. 10 questions which 8 well-known programmers answer. Very, very interesting and a very cool idea. Everyone aspiring to be a good programmer should give this a read because it's good to know how those among "the best" view the field.

   (b) Lisp for Imperative Programmers

This is an introduction to functional programming where the reader is assumed to know only about procedural programming. Anyways, if you're a purely procedural programmer (C, Java, Ruby, etc..) and wanted to know what functional programming was all about, I can't think of any better read than this.

   (c) The Best 46 Free Utilities

This is a list of what the author considers the best windows free utilities for various tasks. I like his suggestions and this is the first place I will go if I want to find a new tool. Hey, it's kind of like an essay.

   (d) Programming Rock Solid Code

This is an interesting piece about the work environment of a place that must write the code to launch and run a multi-billion dollar shuttle.

   (e) No Silver Bullet

A classic CS essay about programming tools and languages.

Jin Yong's Wuxia

Quick Summary of Links:
Romance of the Book and Sword (Buy the translation)
Sword of the Yueh Maiden
Return of the Condor Heroes (Divine Eagle, Gallant Hero)
Wuxia English Forum
Wuxia Fan Translations

Actual Entry:
I've been reading Jin Yong's (aka Louis Cha) Wuxia novels recently. Jin Yong is known as one of the best Wuxia writers. He created 15 Wuxia stories that are famous throughout a lot of the world. I've read three of the stories (soon to be four), but that's only because it's all the translated-into-english text I can find. If I could read Chinese, I could just read it all from here (but it's all simplified.)

Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Wuxia is a genre that comes out of China and literally means "martial arts heroes." They take place in China's past, usually among real events, but everyone's abilities are hyper exaggerated. It's a blend of philosophy, conflicting honor codes, and fantasy martial arts. The best I can compare it to in western culture would be modern takes on Arthurian or Robin Hood stories. I guess Westerns are kind of similar also. If you've seen "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", that's an example of a wuxia story. Except Jin Yong's stories are much better than these examples, and a lot more stuff happens involving much cooler characters.

If you like shonen japanese stories, there is no doubt you'll love the stories Jin Yong has written. In fact, you'll very likely like the novels more than those comics. I'm pretty sure almost all the really good anime fighting ideas (with the chi or martial arts moves) were stolen from China. The fighting used is really interesting and very well imagined. The novels have lots of romance elements, political plots, and technique-laden action. The characters are all really cool and interesting.

So far, I've read the Book and the Sword, Return of Condor Heroes, and Sword of the Yueh Maiden. I've ordered Deer and the Cauldron... but it's pretty pricey at $35 for each of the three books that make the story up. Each book I've read has been very good. Read Sword of the Yueh Maiden if you're doubtful. It's the only short story of Jin Yong's novels and it's a great taste of what the genre is like. For a full listing of his stories, please consult his wikipedia entry, from which you can also get summaries. Beware of spoiling yourself though. I'm going to go over the works that are completely available in English. There are a lot of translations of his, but most of them are in progress works.

Sword of the Yueh Maiden is a short story about two nations at war with each other. You can read it in English here. The weaker nation isn't weaker by much: its only problem is that the swordsmen of the other nation are far stronger. The story is about one of the court advisors looking for a way to overcome this weakness.

The Book and the Sword can be read here and bought here. It's about the actions of a very heroic secret society. It starts with several rescue plots until the "big secret" is uncovered. It has a large cast of characters, such as Chen who fights using go stones and a whip to hit accupoints. There's also the lightning fast one-armed brother and the Mastermind strategist brother. These characters are naturally all ranked in their organization. There are great and powerful female characters as well. It's all great fun.

Return of Condor Heroes follows the growth of a boy named Yang Guo and his relationship with his teacher Xiaolongnu. Yang Guo is the brilliant son of a defeated villian and no one wants him to grow up like his father. However, all his masters treat him poorly so he runs away to a cave where he becomes the student of Xiaolongnu. Lots and lots of stuff happen from there and Yang Guo grows stronger and stronger even despite bad things happening all the time. It's been fan translated and that translation can be found here.

The Deer and the Cauldron was translated into English and released as three installments. Book one can be purchased here, book two can be purchased here, and book three can be purchased here. I haven't read it yet, but it's supposed to be funny. I will update this when I get to read it.

The Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain was also translated into english and can be purchased here. However, I've heard that the translation was really bad.

Unfortunately for me, these books have been adapted into TV series, which I've been spending a lot of energy recently obtaining and then a lot of time watching. These series all last about 40 episodes and it's still not really enough time to show all the events from the novels. Furthermore, these things are pretty much corny and horrible as far as I've seen. They try to rely on cg effects that would be embarrassing in a old playstation game and really has no business in a live action film. I also don't like all the unnatural sounding voice dubs. Despite all my problems with them, I keep watching and am slowly beginning to enjoy it. The stories are good and every once in a while, things are done right (read: not ridiculously poorly.) The only one I've seen like that so far is Tian Long Ba Bu 2002. Return of Condor Heroes 2006 was ridiculous, but the actors looked too cool to complain too much. Okay, mostly Liu Yifei.

Tian Long Ba Bu follows three fairly different heroes whose paths constantly intertwine. There are a lot of characters here and a lot of twists. It's a fun series to watch and no segment really drags for very long. Some story arcs are especially gripping. The best thing is that there are so many characters that are very likable and all the different storylines are equally interesting. The thing that makes this a good tv series is the (relatively) low use of CG, the good casting, and the actually fun to watch fight scenes. I hope I can find another adaptation like this.

I want to mention that, so far, Jin Yong's stories are the only wuxia I've read that I'd really recommend at this point. I've gone through The Sword and the Exquisiteness and Sentimental Swordsman, Ruthless Sword by another very famous wuxia author, Gu Long. While I did read through them both, I didn't like them very much. I couldn't relate to his characters and I felt that they were very one dimensional - a few very good, many very bad, or some inconsequential. I do not feel that he built a very compelling or deep world for his stories to take place. I read his wiki entry, and I think that the differences I saw between Gu Long and Jin Yong are reflected in the ways that they led their lives.

And that's all I've got to say. I just wanted you to give this genre a try if you haven't already, y'know, bring it to your attention. I had no idea about the quality of this stuff until I happened by it after reading the wiki entry on the movie Kung Fu hustle. I mean, you want to open your horizons and see what popular Chinese fiction is like, right? I tried to explain it, but there was no way I could do the stories justice. So please just follow any of the links I gave earlier and give it a try. If you'd like more information, read Jin Yong's wikipedia entry, the fan translation base, and this forum. I'll update this entry as I get more information and as more translations are completed.

Oh, and one last thing slightly related thing. I recently found a freely available translation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. If that interests you, take a look over here.