nocto

surfing around for info on the wireless network cards i’m about to buy i come across this in an online diary:

can’t quite get the wireless link to reach the pub. this is a bad thing. the signal peters out about ten feet from the tables outside the pub door, so i am hoping the external antenna will fix that.

now i’m trying to work out if my local is within range too….

i’ve added a comments feature to all the books on my website, and am now just waiting for somebody to try it out…. my book database is the most searched bit of my website and also the bit that generates the most email so i figured it was a good place to let people add their own comments so everybody can benefit.

now the comment system is written i could easily add comments to my weblog but i’m not sure i’m going to. not yet anyway. the comment system has been half written for the last six months, it’s not as tidy as i’d like yet, but it’s working which is the main thing.

i’ve twice today come across the term soi-disant. the first time i skipped over it without trying to comprehend it. the second time i tried to comprehend but was foxed by a typo. i looked it up: self styled. so now i know.

what i’m not so sure on is why “soi-disant” is considered a better thing to say than “self styled” as they are much the same length and the latter would be much more widely understood. there’s something subtle that i’m missing.

which reminds me of a college lecturer i once had who didn’t understand the subtleties involved in the expression “so called”. anything with a name would be “so called”. references were made to the “so called runge kutta method” as if runge and kutta had nothing to do with the derivation of the method and just gave their names to it to get a little glory. since in many mathematical cases the names on the method and the names of those who invented it don’t match up i wonder if my lecturer was more skilled in english than i first thought.

i haven’t heard of the idea of getting entire cities of people to read the same book at the same time before. and whilst i think encouraging people to read is a good idea i’m not quite sure i like the stepford wives-ness of this. i don’t want to see everyone on public transport reading the same book, seeing what others have picked to read and guessing what they are like is a fun game to play when travelling. i wonder if reading a book about serial killers makes people stay away from me?

perhaps i’m just contrary and find being asked to do something a captivating reason not to do it. i love reading and have spent a good proportion of my life doing it ever since i learnt to but i still hated english literature at school and still detest the books that were my set texts. it’s fifteen years – half a lifetime – since i was set great expectations and i’ve still never picked up another dickens book and quite feasibly may never do. if the rest of my city was setting out to read a single book i’d feel obliged by my own contrary soul to avoid that book even if it was something i already wanted to read.

i do enjoy reading books that i can discuss with other people and books that i wouldn’t pick up of my own volition. that’s why i choose to belong to reading discussion groups. i think promoting discussion groups in real life (all mine are on the net) as well as just promoting reading in general would be a better idea.

two other points are made by the guardian article that i heavily disagree with.

firstly they seem to think reading is something only done to pass time on public transport. the idea that people in los angeles can’t read because most of them drive places is clearly ludicrous. even in la people don’t spend all their leisure time driving.

and secondly i don’t like to see books on tape compared to film as an easy way out for experiencing literature. the author has obviously never listened to a fifteen or twenty hour unabridged audio book. i while away traffic jams with them quite often and i know plenty of other people who listen whilst doing other things where you can’t read (for example, doing the housework or even on the train or bus if reading aggrevates travel sickness (as it does with me)). i don’t think audio books are that different an experience to turning the pages yourself. the narrator does add something to the story, but he or she doesn’t take anything away from the original work.