I remember the first time I read about his affliction. I remember how I felt as he announced on his blog that he has been diagnosed with amyloidosis, and his declaration that he will fight it.

Let me go back a bit before I continue. During a period of idle pursuits many many years ago, I picked up Eye of the World despite the horrendous cover art, and I was struck by its brilliance. I didn't have any expectations, and it blew me away. This, I thought with pleasure, is how the purest high fantasy should be.

I consumed the series. I literally devoured each subsequent book. I can't remember how long it lasted. There was a point where I picked up a recently released Path of Daggers hardcover while I was training in the States! Hardcover! The bloody book was so heavy my luggage almost grounded the plane, and it was so expensive (the ringgit is weak against the dollar after all), I starved myself at night.

However, even the most fervent of fans would admit to the declining quality later in the series. And I, a fervent fan, called it quits halfway into Path of Daggers.

By the time I read his announcement on his blog, I had stopped reading the Wheel of Time for some time. Telling people in book forums that his best had come and gone. Woe that such a great piece of work degenerated into its current state, a symbol of crass commercialism (deservedly or not). While I never told anyone to *not* read Wheel of Time, I gave warning of the impending lull, just as you would tell someone if a particular restaurant was worth repeat visits. You know, that sort of thing.

But I remembered as I read his announcement and his resolve, that despite it all, Wheel of Time is only a story, is only a form of entertainment, and here is this man finding out that he has been struck by a disease that's almost certainly terminal. I find myself thinking how life can really put things into perspective.

So what if the series isn't finished? So what if the latter books suck? So what if people accuse him of selling out to publishers as he stretched the series as taut as he could to the point of breaking? So what?

I followed his progress with regular visits to his blog. Despite his condition, he updated his fans with news of his treatment, and always he never failed to come across as generous, cheerful, hopeful, encouraging to others who shared his predicament. He talked of completing Wheel of Time for his fans, and of starting another series set in the same world. He set goals for himself. The support he got were not only from fans, but from other human beings who connected and felt touched.

There was this time during his treatment where his progress marker, called the Lambda light chains were well within the normal range, and it was great news. I had thought he'd beat it for sure. His last update was just over a week ago.

But alas. My thoughts are with his family during this difficult time.

He has taught me indirectly to cherish life, and I thank him for that, and I thank him for the period of pure pleasure whilst I indulged in his imagined world.

Thank you, Robert Jordan, and may you rest in peace.

I don't know why I'm complaining now - I've done quite a bit of work on my personal project already, but it's frustrating because the slowness is finally getting to me.

I'm used to fast fast fast. When I code I type fast, I think fast, and when I compile, I expect instantaneous feedback.

Not sure if it is due to the .NET framework (I installed 3.0 sometime back). I intentionally upgraded my memory sometime back to, are you ready for this, 1.25GB of memory, specifically to support my development work! Wow! 1.25GB! And still VS is unsatisfied!

Oh, alright, the memory isn't as high as I would have liked, but hey, it was 512MB before.

Hark back to the old days when I made do with GCC.

Now with Visual Studio 2008 on the horizon, with full support for the .NET 3.0 technologies, I'm convinced my machine as it stands right now is more likely to make my morning coffee than to be able to even load VS2008.

I'm sorely tempted to just sink in 2K bucks and build myself a screamer of a PC, so I can code in relatively stress-free environment. But no. I will make my next project pay for itself, and pay for the new machine that I'm most definitely going to buy.

But that 19" LG widescreen monitor is looking very appealing right now. The luscious screen is showing a disembodied finger making a come-hither motion, beckoning me forward, beckoning me to flash my wallet, and I have a feeling I may not be able to withstand the lure for very long...

During my online hiatus, my book-buying has continued unabated, which is, of course, bad. Well, not *that* bad. My haul was pretty prolific, as it was over a period of a couple of weeks. Since I'm pretty fanatical (read:crazy obsessive) about continuity, I've decided to post everything I've bought, in as close to chronological order as possible.

• Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud
  I'm more than an occasional graphic novel/comics reader. Years of comic book buying has made me more jaded than your average oyster, so I only seek out works that either I've heard good things about, or genuinely interest me because of the subject matter. This book has been on my comics wishlist for a long time, but it's only recently that I've put my mind to actually finding it. A trip to Borders and after jostling in the aisle with fashionably dressed teenagers yapping on mobiles more expensive than my monthly mortgage, I found it. My impressions will be in another blog post, naturally.

Shortly after my McCloud, I accidentally made my way to the Big Bookshop Warehouse Bookstore in Atria, and as I have for the last few visits, took out a stack of books. This place is dangerous - I spend almost 100 bucks every time I walk in.

• Chess, Stefan Zweig
  A book about chess. Thinner than some of the contractual documents I have to read at work. How can I resist? It's about this chess champion who is aboard a luxury liner, and is challenged by a fellow traveller. While the challenger is having his butt handed to him, someone in the crowd whispers suggestions that is more than a match for the grandmaster. Who is this mysterious person, and what is this potent chess player's story?. I finished this book, and it was an enjoyable romp, albeit a short one.


• The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy
  It's probably as close as I'm ever going to get to a Tolstoy, as I've decided I will not read Karenina or War and Peace.


• Marry Me, John Updike
  Infidelity as told by a modern maestro of literature? The 'maelstrom' that is marriage - of 2 couples who are each cheating with the other's spouse? Are you kidding me? This one went straight to my shopping basket.


• Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
  I hear this one is gonna make me stay away from McDonald's and other fast food chains. Already the mere whisper of the suggestions contained in this book is making me wary of 5 minute burgers. Unless I'm incredibly hungry, of course.


• Metamorphosis and Other Stories, Franz Kafka
  The thought processes of a man who turns into a cockroach. Who wouldn't be intrigued?


• The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
  Now it is in one of the forums I frequent that I first heard about this. I had no idea it was a fantasy classic before I then. I'm a jaded fantasy fan, so anything fresh is welcome, and I'm hoping this will whet my appetite. The devil in 1930s Moscow, and a satire of high-renown. There a chick in there somewhere too, and with a name like Margarita, I'm thinking it's gonna be cool.


• One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  I'm a little worried about this one. Its reputation precedes it like lightning before the boom of thunder, and I've heard this literary thunder being alternately praised and booed. For this reason alone I intended to read it and decide for myself.

I had a voucher that I have to use, so I went and bought:

• The Harmony Silk Factory, Tash Aw
  Up and coming Malaysian author. Won some prizes too. I get such a thrill seeing the word 'Malaysia' in published novels, so this one will probably have me doing cartwheels, seeing that it is set in Malaysia.

There another weekend saw me walking unexpectedly to a Borders sale in The Curve! Here, I got:

• Managing With The Power of NLP: Neurolinguistic Programming; A Model for Better Management, David Molden
  Anthony Robbins uses it. Now I will use it. When I read up on it, that is. Neuro-linguistic programming is a method of communication that operates at an innate level of human interaction. Had a brief intro of it at work in a workshop, and now I'm ready to learn a little more. Maybe will be able to get my team to do all my work for me. Attaboy.

In another round of shopping, I found this at a great price:

• Learn To Play Winning Chess: History, Rules, Skills and Tactics, John Saunders
  This was RM30. There is no way this beautifully illustrated guide be sold at this price on a normal, sane day. I pounced, like a Knight on an undefended Queen, and mate! (Please, your minds out of the gutter).

Actually, before I bought the NLP book, I was shopping somewhere, and there was a used bookstore. Under a pretense or other, I sneaked in and came out with 3 books:

• The Book of Merlyn, T.H. White
  Don't you hate it when you buy a book and you find that the 'real' ending is really in another book. That's what I found out when I bought The Once and Future King. So I hadn't started on King Arthur's adventures until I found this book. Good thing it's cheap too.


• Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
  A seminal piece of science fiction. So I heard. I'm dying to find out exactly how bad it really is.


• Grass, Sheri S. Tepper
  Heard good things about this lady. Next to Le Guin and Bujold, probably one of the more acclaimed female sci-fi author out there.

The reason I listed it here instead of above is because I took a picture of them together with my latest stash, which was purchased earlier this week. They are:

• The Weekend Novelist, Robert J Ray and Bret Norris
  I know I have at least a book in me. Apparently if I follow the directions in this book, I will have a full novel in my hands in 52 weeks. Well, start the clock! Uhm, wait. I didn't say when.


• An Introduction to English Poetry, James Fenton
  
  Continuing my self-education of the intricacies of literature, and this time it is an effort to more deeply understand the murky waters of poetry. Murky for me, that is. I love poems, but can hardly delve beyond the obvious in most works, which I suspect is like admiring the tip of the poetry iceberg. I'm hoping this book will shed some light on the remaining 90% that is hidden from my view.


• Northern Lights, Philip Pullman
  Found this cheap. Found Book 3 (see below) too. Unfortunately, I couldn't find Book 2, which is a bummer. I hate it when I can't get the complete set, as I tend to wait until I get the full thing before embarking on the series. You know, in case the books are really good, then the waiting to get the missing book will be intolerable.


• The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman
  I hate it when I can't complete the full set. Oh, I've said it already?


• Blooming Beautiful by Melanie Sykes
  This one was chosen by the wife. She's apparently some celebrity in either UK (or US). Uhm, I'm not going to read this.

Hmm... didn't this make up for all the missing blog posts before this?

Mens doubles, it may surprise some to know, is a team event, and the failure or success of the team is borne by the all the members of the team.

So Boon Heong made some mistakes. So? In the quarters against the Japanese they spent a lot of effort attacking the weaker Ikeda, presumable because he makes a lot of mistakes too. But oh, wait... the Japanese won anyway, didn't they?

Mens doubles is a *team* event, and should be treated as such. TBH-KKK failed, and they failed as a team.

The badminton team should put up a united front to the public. Not because Boon Heong 'choked on crucial points'! Take these 'reasons' offline! Debate and thresh it out behind the glare of publicity. Everyone knows what happened, we bloody hell watched it. There's no need to rub his face in - the bloke's been through enough himself, and he doesn't need it being plastered all over the freaking media reminding everyone and his dog that the whole country's disappointed because of him. Which isn't true at all.

What good do you think this sort of coverage will possible bring to Boon Heong? That he's inferior to KKK? That he has a lot to learn? Where the hell were the media when KKK was show-ponying in the local circuit tournaments - was KKK dragged through mud in public? Again, what good would come of it? How would TBH feel now that KKK goes on record saying this defeat 'really hurt'?

KKK-TBH is still a good pairing. All this media attention is focused on the wrong things, and will affect the morale of the team unnecessarily. Or worse, affect their budding relationship and the all important on-court chemistry. We as fans have a right to hope for the stars, but let's taper with down with some reality checks and good old fashioned sensibility.

TBH, pick yourself up! Your country still needs you.

Your programmer personality type is:

DLSB

You're a Doer.
You are very quick at getting tasks done. You believe the outcome is the most important part of a task and the faster you can reach that outcome the better. After all, time is money.

You like coding at a Low level.
You're from the old school of programming and believe that you should have an intimate relationship with the computer. You don't mind juggling registers around and spending hours getting a 5% performance increase in an algorithm.

You work best in a Solo situation.
The best way to program is by yourself. There's no communication problems, you know every part of the code allowing you to write the best programs possible.

You are a liBeral programmer.
Programming is a complex task and you should use white space and comments as freely as possible to help simplify the task. We're not writing on paper anymore so we can take up as much room as we need.

You can try it yourself here.

For the past couple of years, there has been an increase in warehouse book sales from major bookstore chains in the country. In fact, it has gotten to the point where one can look forward to a warehouse sale every couple of months. This is excellent for the general public, as the prices are low. For booklovers, it's like heaven.

The issue raised is that of the repercussions stemming from continuous warehouse sales. There is typically a sizeable selection of books on offer in warehouse sales which are also being sold at full price from bookstores around the country. This, of course, affects business as usual, and given time, the book industry here may implode, and especially hurting local distributors and publishers.

At the heart of the discussion is the practice of 'book dumping', which is mass importing of remaindered books from neighbouring countries and selling them off cheap here.

I'm of the opinion that books here are expensive. At almost RM40 a pop for a mass-market paperback, it's a pretty high barrier to entry to a lot of folks who'd simply see a better way to spend the money. For bibliophiles like myself, this is getting to be an incredibly expensive pastime.

I will never forget the feeling when I see books I rushed out to buy from bookstores, only to find them sold under RM10 in warehouse sales.

There are those who believe that books sold in Malaysian bookstores are among the most affordable anywhere in the world. That is utter nonsense. Try telling that to the average wage earner. We have to factor in the exchange rate and the cost of shipping the books over here. Compare that to someone in the States for instance, also an average wage-earner, who gets to buy a mass-market paperback for less than 10 bucks. Anyone will tell you that when you live in the country, you go by the country's cost of living. Who cares if the book costs less here if we convert the cost of the book from USD to RM?

So from where I'm standing, warehouse sales make a lot of sense to me financially. I get the sort of buying power someone else in another country has. And the books are *new*, by golly! So go to warehouse sales! Buy great books at great prices! You have the power now to *try* new authors, and expand from your comfort zone without feeling the pinch too badly! More exclamation points!!!

Some may accuse me of being short-sighted, that supporting these sales will accelerate the demise of the book industry. The truth is you're never going to be able to stop people from buying from warehouse sales - that's just crazy talk. The market will always show you what works and what doesn't. And warehouse sales are clearly working.

So what needs to happen so that we can enjoy lower-priced books without the danger of an imploding industry? Lower the book prices.

The government has always stated that it wants a learned and well-read society. It has launched the National Reading Campaign, but largely confined that to the National Library. Nothing was done to instigate growth in the general public, nothing done economically as far as I can see beyond increasing the amount for book purchases as tax relief. Let the warehouse sale be a wake-up call to the distributors and publishers to push the government to lower the prices of books in general even further.

If the prices stay as they are, well, the warehouse sales are continuing to cater to the needs of the general public.

I have more books than I can read at present. Almost all are gems that is simply calling out to be read. I'm in no hurry to purchase from regular bookstores unless they are must-have new releases (George RR Martin, Guy Gavriel Kay, HP7 (yes, stop snickering), etc).

The one thing I am worried about where warehouse sales are concerned is the obvious impact to local authors and publishers. I bought my copy of May 13 for RM20, easily the most expensive in the haul that I had. Somehow this strikes me as wrong, and it's not because Dr Kua hasn't written something worthy of the 20 bucks.

Preemptive Comment Responses:
Q. If price is the issue, then why not use the library? They are *free*! Or doesn't Malaysia have libraries?
A. Sadly, libraries are not as commonplace as you'd think around here. I'd agree that having more libraries and making it more accessible is one of the ways to tackle the accessibility to books problem. But it's not especially good for bookstore sales either, and that's what we're talking about.

Also, I hear our libraries are crap. I've not been to one in about 15 years, so I can't really comment without looking like an idiot (if I haven't already).

I'm beginning to formulate a book buying theory that I believe will work very well in Malaysia, given the propensity for book distributors and book stores to hold warehouse sales. I think I will talk about it in my next post.

Then I made a jump to a company that uses Notes.

Lotus Notes is an incredibly powerful piece of software. There's no denying it - it is simply a titan in the groupware category of software. There has to be a reason a software like this has gained a seemingly unassailable foothold in the groupware industry.

From my point of view however, I can't for the life of me understand how it has achieved that.

I'm a useability kinda guy. I like smart user interfaces, software that doesn't require a lot of thinking to figure out, no matter how complicated the software. I'd like to think I'm an intelligent guy, but sitting there figuring out stuff via guesswork, or worse, figuring out stuff that clearly doesn't work right, isn't my idea of fun.

So here is a list of stuff about Notes that bugs me:

• A basic reply button gives you three functionality - reply, reply with history, reply without attachments. I mean, what the hell? If I reply, of course I want to bloody quote the bugger. If I wanted to send a blank email response to the sender (which is what the default Reply does), then I would have created a new mail with his address! This is not so much of a problem if it wasn't the default behaviour when I reply a mail. To make it worse, I can't change the preferences to make it behave the way I think it should.
• Cannot quickly add recipients into address book. This is a more irritating problem than you'd first expect. Notes somehow assumes that everyone you're ever going to communicate with are other Notes users in the same organization.
• Oh, the address book is unusable.
• To explain the following problem, a scenario is called for. Let's say Archie has Jughead in his addressbook under the nickname 'Juggy'. Archie sends an email to a few people, and 'Juggy' is one of them One of the recipients (say Veronica) decides to reply all. But lo and behold, Veronica gets an error on delivery because Notes doesn't know who 'Juggy' is, even though she already has Jughead on her address book. This is a crazy problem because Notes isn't smart enough to stop using other people's nicknames when someone else decides to reply all. Why oh why can't it resolve the email properly?
• Simple selection doesn't work in the email list view - I must work with its cryptic 'checkmarks' system which doesn't adhere to basic windows SHIFT-select or CTRL select commands. It's infuriating!
• The searching is crap. You know you're in trouble when another company provides a tool (called Google Desktop) to search for content on *your* application, and does it *miles* better than you can.
• I cannot sort by subject and cannot quick search on the currently sorted column. I can, but it's useless, because it only searches for the characters in order of appearance (I will find "Bozo the clown", but not "I'm not a bozo")
• Every time you start to open your mailbox, your custom list of folders are all closed - it doesn't remember your recently open folders. That is irritating as I've got emails sent thru filters, and i want to see them.
• The concept of replication irritates me. You never seem to know whether that mail you sent was *really* sent, because you forgot to replicate. Well, actually, you can find out, but hey, I'm the user, and my impressions count a lot. I know Outlook as a similar concept, but it somehow doesn't strike me as a chore. If I wanted to really be sure, I can just tap F5 in Outlook instead of Alt-B, 4, Alt-2, Down Arrow, Enter in Notes.
• Images in the email doesn't behave like normal objects - I can't select it, copy and paste it elsewhere (i.e. Word, Paint).
• The bullet handling and tables in the email is crap
• On the tool bar, there is a button called 'Search'. It's a drop down button, meaning there's a little arrow by the side that shows other options related to Search. And you know what I find? The following dropdown options under Search: 'Altavista', 'Lycos', 'Hotbot'. They are now on the 7th generation of the software, and you still find *this*???
• The email address lookup is weak - even when you have a local replica of the address book, a lookup takes forever if you (god forbid) ever misspell a recipient's name, because the system will automatically know it's not in the loca replica, and will automatically search on the main directory. If you're an offline user, that's 1 minute of lost time. Now imagine you misspell 2 people's name on route to writing a 1 sentence email. Shoot self? Probably. But any software that makes me want to shoot myself should probably be shot first.
• Now this is incredible. Every email software I've used has this ability, but not gargantuan bigshot Notes. You can't download email! You can't drag and drop it onto your desktop, and somehow make it store email as separate files. As a consequence, you can't attach email in another email, so you have to (ready for this?) *copy and paste* the contents of the email you're attaching into the new email!
• Cannot multiple undo!
• Copy and paste in the to, cc, bcc fields are buggy! The highlighting is all wrong, especially if you start selecting from the middle of a to/cc/bcc field that's very long.
• Why would i reply to myself if I reply all???
• Archive - when moving of documents to archive, and the documents deleted from view, you can't immediately do it again with another docs unless you refresh the view. This only happens for local replicas, but since nobody should be using direct server copies anyway, this should be fixed!

I hate Outlook. But having used Notes, I'd jump back in bed with Outlook any time of the day.

[Click on image for a larger picture]

Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
The Trial, Franz Kafka
The Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
The Long Good-bye, Raymond Chandler
Saturday, Ian McEwan
May 13, Kua Kia Soong

I've always been on the lookout for Raymond Chandler. Having sampled Dashiell Hammett, I wonder how Philip Marlowe can compare to Sam Spade, and I can't wait to see which one I like more.

Most of us are familiar with people who make a fetish out of quality: They read only good books, they see only good movies, they listen only to good music, they discuss politics only with good people, and they’re not shy about letting you know it. They think this makes them smarter and better than everybody else, but it doesn’t. It makes them mean and overly judgmental and miserly, as if taking 15 minutes to flip through “The Da Vinci Code” is a crime so monstrous, an offense in such flagrant violation of the sacred laws of intellectual time-management, that they will be cast out into the darkness by the Keepers of the Cultural Flame. In these people’s view, any time spent reading a bad book can never be recovered. They also act as if the rest of humanity is watching their time sheets.

I'm a frequent forum goer, and this certainly is a perfect-fit description of some of the people I know online.

In fact, I couldn't have put it better myself (although that is also because I have not the prowess in prose to come up with such a description).

Except I would call it something other than 'make a fetish out of quality.' I don't know what. There must be a word out there.

Not that I have anything against these people, oh no. But sometimes the gimmicky persona does get kinda grating after a while.

Last weekend, I bought the following:

The Thousandfold Thought, R Scott Bakker
The Gormenghast Novels, Mervyn Peake
The Little Endless Storybook, Jill Thompson

Then of course yesterday there was the Times Bookstore Warehouse Sale, and that triggered another round of indiscriminate and irresponsible spending.

PHP 5 Objects, Patterns and Practice, Matt Zandstra
Active Directory for Dummies (the wife is tackling Active Directory at work, so a good find, this one)
Misspent Youth, Peter F Hamilton
DNS & BIND Cookbook (the wife is getting more technical than me! I couldn't care less about DNS or BIND)
Finance for non-financial Managers
A Collection of Beauties At the Height of Their Popularity, Whitney Otto
Orlando, Woolf
Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrless
Cosmopolis, Don DeLillo
Oracle Night, Paul Auster
First sounds (for my little one)
FARM (for my little one)

Out of pure coincidence, the dedication page for Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis was made out to... Paul Auster.

Wow.

I will talk more about the books a little later.

Whoa.

It didn't matter if you were a christian or not. It was a matter of principle. Satan=bad. Support Satan=bad. So there were many who heard the news suddenly had doubts about their grocery shopping list. Pringles seemed (literally) sinful.

I have to say that throughout the years of my life since that piece of 'revelation' (geddit? Revelation? Har har har!) traveled with me, but didn't stop me from buying their shampoos or chips (stop eating Pringles? That would kill me!)

More than a decade later, I come across this bit of news, where a judge found that P&G are indeed not in a member of the league of the cloven-hooved one.

The P&G thing was like a unresolved strand of information in my mind. Dangling awkwardly out of place in the organized bits of 'stuff'. Are they or aren't they, well, so arrogant?

So this one is now filed under 'Resolved, now forget about it'.

This isn't so bad if I knew I'll get to them sooner or later. However, I know I'm devoting all my free time to a personal project, and that means I'm reluctant to get sucked into a book right now. So it's later.

But the books on offer! So tempting...

The Once and Future King. The God of Small Things. Pompeii. State of Fear. The Relic. Never Let Me Go. The Little Friend. Deadhouse Gates. City of Saints and Madmen. The Catcher in the Rye. Watership Down. A Clockwork Orange. The Midwich Cuckoos. Moving Pictures. Stardust. Fight Club. Mrs Dalloway. Smiley's People. Cetaganda. Ghostwritten. Lord of Light. The War Against Cliche. My Life. A Short History of Nearly Everything. The Wizard Knight. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. The Liar. Light. Angela's Ashes.

How the hell does one choose?

Yes, I'm doing a roundup of recently purchased book again.

Here we go:

Ring, Koji Suzuki
Shriek: An Afterword, Jeff Vandermeer
Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
Banewreaker, Jacqueline Carey
Godslayer, Jacqueline Carey

I think I will talk a little above every one of the books above.

Maybe not.

Well, not now.

The book is really laugh out loud funny, and there is this picture of all the 9 Supreme Court Justices naked. Hey it's crude, but when I looked at the page I laughed so hard!