Although I don’t do much geocaching these days, it’s still a big part of my life, so I wrote this song parody of “When I Was a Lad” from H.M.S. Pinafore. This has proven to be quite popular among my geocaching friends. Enjoy.
Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream by Joshua Davis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This documentary-style narrative tells the story of four teens in Phoenix Arizona starting in 2004 and follows them for years. The teens are all Mexican-Americans, some undocumented, others with legal status. Led by a go-getter named Oscar Lopez they formed a robotics team at their high school, one of the most impoverished in the area. This team went on to compete against other robotic teams in national competitions going up against the likes of MIT among others. The grit, smarts, and persistence of the boys is well-told and inspiring, but the book is more than about robotics. It sets forth the hardships they faced and in particular the racism and discrimination that hindered their efforts. The story is both inspiring but also a tad schmaltzy. The movie based on the same story was even more so, and whitewashed a lot of the negatives, especially some of the family relationship issues and post-graduation troubles the boys faced. I enjoyed the book, but I couldn’t finish the movie knowing what I did from the book.
The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne by Chris Sweeney
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Roxie Laybourne was a diminutive woman, but a firebrand who made a lasting impression at the Smithsonian Institution as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the FAA, the U.S. Air Force and many airlines. She was an expert at identifying birds using forensic methods she invented herself in days before DNA sequencing was possible. As a young woman she was called on to identify some bird remains during a deadly airline crash caused by that bird and that catapulted her into a career in bird identification. The book is basically a biography, not a criminal whodunnit. Roxie did testify in some criminal cases and even some civil trials, although her testimony may not have been crucial, but her main focus over the years was aviation safety. Bird strikes do bring down planes and kill people. Her work identifying bird species led to establishing standards for strength of windshields and engines, but also helped airports, air bases and airlines with knowing migration patterns at specific times so that they can mitigate the risks. She no doubt saved many lives during her career and mentored many others. Much of the book deals with the struggles of a woman without a PhD fighting her way up the ladder in a world of men with doctorates. I can’t say the book was riveting, but I found Roxie to be an interesting character and there was enough detective work and bird facts to pass muster. I’ll stretch a 3.5 to a 4 for this rating.
Bird City: Adventures in New York’s Urban Wilds by Ryan Goldberg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The author provides a detailed description of many of the prime spots in New York City to go birding. He also mentions many species, giving descriptions and habits. But much of the book is about birders, naturalists, researchers, city/state/federal agencies, and the politics and disputes between them. If you’re a birder you’ll probably love this book, and maybe if you’re a New Yorker, too. But I found that latter part boring and it took up too much of the book. The title is misleading. It should be birder city. I was put off at first by the lack of photos or other illustrations of the birds, but I realized that everybody today has a phone or computer and can look up beautiful photos of any of the species mentioned. Photos are really expensive to print in a book, so I’ll give him a pass on that one. I did spend a lot of time on my phone looking and pictures and maps. I lived in New York years ago, but I never lived or worked in Brooklyn, where most of the action is in this book. All in all it was okay, but not a book I can recommend to anyone other than a birder.
My Friends by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Louisa, a homeless 18-year-old artist is “discovered” by a famous artist known as C. Jat. We later find the four letters of his name are actually the first letters of the names of his four friends. The artist realizes Louisa is “one of us” and shortly thereafter dies and leaves Louisa the most valuable of his paintings. She is rich except has no money or place to keep the painting. Ted, the T in Jat, gives her the painting according to the artist’s wishes, but then tries to distance himself from her. Instead she latches onto him to get his help selling the painting. They take a train ride which turns into various misadventures. Eventually Louisa gets from Ted and others the fascinating story/-ies of the artist and his friends and the painting. It is a story of deep love between friends. Of course it’s quite implausible, but that shouldn’t stop the enjoyment. I’d rate it 4 and a half stars but Goodreads doesn’t allow half stars, so I’m rounding up.
Vanish by Tess Gerritsen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This tale is told in two timelines. Some Russian women are lured into what they thought would be good-paying jobs in America, but instead are smuggled in, abused, and forced into prostitution. The other story line involves a woman detective with Boston P.D. (Rizzoli). She’s pregnant and at a later point in the book, gives birth, her first child. Her husband is an FBI agent, but he’s a relatively minor character. Isles is the medical examiner, but she plays a relatively minor role in this one, too. She’s there mainly so the author can describe grisly autopsy scenes. The two story lines merge after a hostage situation arises. Of course there’s a conspiracy at the highest level of government and the prego detective has to solve it while on maternity leave. It’s all ridiculous and very disappointing. I listed to the audiobook and that was a big mistake, too. The reader does a good job when not doing Boston cop dialogue, but her Boston accent is awful – or I should say, it may be accurate (I don’t know as I’ve never lived in Boston), but the sound is so nasal and grating that it is very unpleasant to listen to. The story is also unnecessarily gory and full of gross stuff, both sexual and visceral.
At Midnight Comes the Cry by Julia Spencer-Fleming
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
In this 10th Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne novel the married odd couple becomes involved with a white nationalist group and the domestic situation of the abused spouse of one of them. Clare is an Episcopal priest and former army helicopter pilot. Russ is a recently involuntarily retired police chief. It seemed to be an inauspicious pairing to me, but the author managed to create a suspenseful tale when the body of a forest ranger is found in the remote wilderness of an upstate New York park. I’d give this one another half star if Goodreads allowed it. It suffers a little from its reliance on the reader knowing the main characters already. I didn’t and I learned barely enough to follow the family dynamics there. The final scene was too complicated. The shape and connections of the physical space are important and it just isn’t easy to envision from text descriptions. But I enjoyed having characters who weren’t potty-mouthed all the time and I especially liked the fact the author paid attention to law enforcement jurisdiction as a plot device. That’s so important in real life (I was an FBI agent), but is often glossed over or misrepresented in crime fiction. I never did figure out what the title had to do with the story.
SUNO is an AI platform for making music. I’ve posted about it before. But it’s also a way to find new music. It’s not well-designed for that purpose, so it takes some work, but it’s been worth it for me so far. Once you’re a member, including a free member, you can search for songs using genre, creator, instruments, title, style, etc. The search results will be the creations of members, i.e. creations that the SUNO AI software made using text prompts, audio uploads, or a combination of the two, so it’s hit and miss. You have to listen to a lot of not-so-good stuff, but it’s quick and easy to just go on to the next one. I’ve found great songs there that way.
Another way is to create your own songs using those same techniques. With experimentation and luck you can produce something new that you really like. I’ve done that, too, in many genres: ragtime, blues, rock, gospel. I’ve created over 20 songs that I really like. You can download songs you created yourself. You can put all of the ones you like in playlists. In fact, every song you give the thumbs up to automatically goes into your Liked playlist. You can listen to your own liked songs later just by going to that playlist.
Here are a couple of SUNO rock songs I really like, one by a French creator and one I made:
Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Jet is a 27-year-old woman still living at home after a failed law school attempt. She’s attacked from behind on Halloween with a hammer, but somehow survives. Only she suffers a bone fracture at the base of her skull which will almost certainly result in a fatal aneurysm. She has a week to live and is determined to find her “killer” although, as the title says, she’s not quite dead yet. She and her best friend from childhood, Billy, set out to do so. Billy is devoted to some unnamed woman he has loved since forever. Of course Jet is the only person too dense to figure out who that is. It’s an original plot setup. The family dynamics are very complicated. Jet has an older brother who is a rather angry sort and dealing with a father who doesn’t value him as he should. Their sister Emily was the rock star of the family, but died as an 11-year-old when her hair got caught in the pool drain. Billy’s mother took off and abandoned her family some years earlier. Everyone is blaming everyone else for these things. All these play into the final plot resolution. I couldn’t get excited about it, but the book was interesting enough to keep me reading to the end. Perhaps it qualifies as a beach read.
I’m continuing to enjoy using SUNO AI to remix songs. This is more than just playing around with it. I used to be able to play guitar and even upload a few videos of my playing to YouTube, but arthritis robbed me of that ability years ago. I’ve really missed the creative side of my music. SUNO has given that back to me in a new way. Enjoy the Bessie Smith classic reimagined.
I recently experimented with SUNO, a music AI site. I uploaded my guitar version of the classic ragtime song Ballin’ the Jack and asked for a swing version. This is the product.
If you want to compare to my original, here’s it is:
The Humans by Matt Haig
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This very boring novel features an alien who comes to Earth to destroy it because his species thinks humans are illogical and self destructive and thus a danger to the universe if they acquire superior technical knowledge. The alien, in human form, quickly begins to appreciate humans and their illogical emotions. That much is no spoiler as it is pretty much the published description of the book in Goodreads and libraries. It is also pretty much the entire plot, which is the main reason it is so boring. It is very well-trodden ground in literature, movies, and TV. The author has added nothing to the existing genre.
Here’s a list, in chronological order, of several very similarly themed works involving human-looking or humanoid aliens with that initial view of humans: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 movie/1940 short story); Childhood’s End (1953), although the Overlords look like devils; Star Trek (1966) – Spock and the Borg are humanoid and both consider humans inferior, but only the Borg are hostile; Mork & Mindy (1978+ TV series); V (1983+ TV miniseries); Starman (1984); Star Trek: Voyager (1997+ several episodes); The Humans (this book – 2013); The Orville (2017+ TV series); Resident Alien (2021 TV series). This is just a sample; others exist. There are others where the aliens aren’t human/humanoid, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) but have a similar story line.
The plots of these vary somewhat, with differing degrees of initial hostility toward us; some aliens becoming appreciative of humans or affectionate and protective, and others leaving humans alone to fend for themselves, but generally change their initial view of us to a more positive one. The point is that there is absolutely nothing new in this book and it doesn’t even having the redeeming humor of several of the listed works. The only “humor” is the running gag present in every one of the above where aliens think we’re hideously ugly and can’t understand our illogical self-destructiveness like littering and fighting. That grows old real fast. The writing is a mundane narrative.
The Confession by Sheldon Siegel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Mike Daley is a lawyer, a graduate of Boalt Hall of Law, Berkeley’s premiere law school, and, coincidentally, my alma mater, so he has a leg up in my book. He’s representing Ramon, a priest, accused of murder. The victim, a girlfriend of his from his pre-priesthood days, was pregnant and Ramon may be the father. Okay, that’s an interesting twist. The Archdiocese wants to take over the case in order to protect its interests, but Ramon wants Mike and his ex-wife Rosie, to represent his best interests. But Ramon can’t directly defy the Archdiocese. So Mike is fighting the D.A. and his own co-counsel. I like the complications this introduces. The author handles all the legal stuff in a clever, entertaining way while still being quite accurate.
But the real appeal is the clever dialogue. There’s a lot of it, but the author employs a shtick where interleaved between the lines of dialogue are asides showing what Mike is really thinking. It works well. Everybody, including Mike, is lying to everyone else but Mike’s asides keep us on the right track. The book has its flaws. Daley uses his brother as a P.I. who can magically find anything, tail everyone, tap any phone, get private police and other records, etc., largely through illegal methods. As an FBI agent for 26 years I’m well aware of what a P.I. can reasonably be expected to achieve and this ain’t it. So suspend your disbelief. Of course every time Mike makes some progress, one more thing goes wrong, implicating his client. His fingerprints are on the murder weapon; they’re on the neck of the strangled victim; a star defense witness gets murdered, etc. Despite a few cliches, it was a fun read. Goodreads doesn’t allow half stars, but I’d give this 4-1/2.
My wife and I are alone this Christmas Day, but our kids will be arriving from out of state for a late “Christmas” on Saturday. I’m greatly looking forward to that. This has led me to muse about our good fortune, which is also very bad luck in a way. My wife and I were both born and raised in San Jose. We married in 1980 and bought our first house together in 1981. It cost less than $200K, which was pricey then. Fortunately I owned a house I’d bought when I was single, and the increased equity from that house was sufficient for a down payment on a house in what was then unincorporated, but later became Los Altos. It’s a three-bedroom tract house that would be considered ordinary middle-class housing virtually anywhere in the U.S. But then Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley. Everything in my neighborhood now sells for at least three million, and most for over four million. That makes us rich on paper, but it’s still a three-bedroom tract house from the 1950s and we live much as we did when my wife had to cut coupons. So our good fortune is that we can afford to live in this wonderful area and have financial security. Our kids will inherit millions and they and their kids will have financial security. But the mixed blessing part is that we almost never see them. They can’t afford to live near us, or at least they have made the rational choice to live someplace where housing costs wouldn’t strangle their ability to enjoy a normal life. Of course, we could move to be near one of them, but they live thousands of miles apart from each other and we would have to leave our home and friends, doctors, etc. we’ve accumulated over decades. I’m not complaining, really, as I feel fortunate. But the point of my musing is simply that old saw: money doesn’t buy happiness. Relish and nourish your family life and don’t be in headlong pursuit of more money. Merry Christmas.
Proof by Jon Cowan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I had hoped and expected this to be a legal thriller. It’s not. There’s no courtroom cross-examination, no clever legal loopholes exploited. The main character, Jake West, is a crappy father, an alcoholic, a lousy husband (now ex), and violates all sorts of ethical lines as an attorney. He’s falsely accused of murdering his law partner and former best friend. I guess we’re supposed to root for him as he fights to clear his name. He goes after his firm’s biggest client (which happens to be his father’s firm, too), a property developer, who, of course under the rules of cliched plots, is corrupt. He does his fighting primarily through extortion. I found Jake barely better than the scummy people he goes after. The plot is so implausible it’s ridiculous, the characters are all stock stereotypes, and the book very disappointing overall. Cowan is no Grisham or Turow.
I don’t like heavy metal music. I pretty much hate it. If you’d ever asked me if I’d put a Metallica song on my playlist, I’d have told you no. But I’ve done just that. More precisely, I just added a cover of a Metallica song. The title is Nothing Else Matters. I still don’t think I’ll ever add an actual Metallica recording, but I listened to the original and it’s not very offensive to my ears although it’s not something I’d choose to listen to. The cover is by the band Apocalyptica, which, despite its heavy metal sounding name, is not a metal band. It’s four cellos that cover rock songs arranged in a heavy sort of classical-rock style. The song is a rather somber almost dirge-like number and quite beautiful on the cellos.
I had actually asked some AI bots for recommendations of modern bands that do classical pieces in a semi-rock style similar to A Fifth of Beethoven or Tétaz’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. I got some recommendations meeting that criteria but one bot recommended Apocalyptica, warning me that it mostly did the reverse, i.e. took rock songs and did them in a semi-classical style, so it wasn’t a case of AI hallucinating.
Here are some other songs I just added to my playlists:
The Winds from Further West by Alexander McCall Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is lightweight stuff that passes the time pleasantly enough. Neil, a doctor doing research, is mistreated at work and cheated on by his girlfriend so he takes the offer of his gay friend to decamp on the island of Mull, a remote Scottish area. There he enjoys the small-town low pressure feel and meets a lovely woman vet. You can pretty much fill in the rest. I do wish the author would find another word besides “just.” “I just do”. “It just is.” “They just can’t.” Every character speaks this way. They just do.
The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip by Stephen Witt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Jensen Huang is a remarkable man. He is no doubt a very capable engineer, but his success has come more from his competitive drive and uncompromising work ethic. He both inspires and intimidates his followers. In that sense he is much like Steve Jobs, but Huang is smarter technically and shrewder in a business sense. He was always a big advocate of parallel computing. The current success of Nvidia, though, is partly luck. It began primarily as a graphics video card manufacturer relying mostly on PC gamers. It struggled along with that small consumer customer base until the killer app – AI – came along and found that the graphics cards were ideally suited for it. Huang was slow to see the match for what it was and much of the company’s success was due to the skill of some very smart people who were recruited by Huang for their brilliance and loyalty to parallel computing. They in turn were drawn to Nvidia because of Huang’s reputation as a parallel computing pioneer and because he had the hardware and openness to try new things. Nvidia is now the world’s most valuable company.
The book tells this story and tries to give the reader a sense of the technology, but is really a biography. There is a brief thumbnail description of a neural net and parallel computing, but barely mentions other aspects of artificial intelligence like Large Language Models (LLM), deep learning, or random forest computing. If you read this hoping to gain an understanding of how AI works, you will be disappointed. It seems many, maybe all, scientists and AI programmers don’t really understand how it works. The writing is professional, reportorial in style, but becomes rather repetitive largely because so many stories of the people who are drawn to Nvidia are so similar. If nothing else, I gained an appreciation for how complex and specialized the technology is and I learned that the huge energy draw AI causes is for the training, not as much its subsequent use. It’s not a page turner, but I enjoyed the book.
The Doorman by Chris Pavone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Chicky Diaz is the senior doorman at the most famous co-op/apartment building in New York City. He’s a loyal employee and all-around well-meaning soul who has come upon hard times. In the building are some fabulously rich residents including Emily, a drop-dead gorgeous raven-haired beauty married to Griffin, a despicable CEO of an arms manufacturer. Also in the building is Julian, a gallerist who makes a living selling ugly but valuable art to rich people like Emily and Griffin. Their lives intertwine throughout this novel. Some gangsters join the mix. The pace is good, the writing better, and the suspense builds. The author shreds Griffin and his MAGA brethren mercilessly, so if that’s your politics you won’t like this one, but that’s really a sidelight. There’s enough real action at the end to qualify it as a thriller, I suppose, but barely. It’s more about wealth inequality and the plight of the downtrodden.
The Last Ferry Out by Andrea Bartz
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
This bait and switch is awful. It’s described as a twisty thriller and was on my library’s Mystery and Thriller list. There is no mystery and it’s not thrilling. It’s pretty much just a lesbian love story. Eszter (small pretty blonde) dies on a remote Mexican Island, and her fiancee Abby (tall muscular with a fade) goes there to find out what happened. Abby is paranoid and overreacts, misinterprets everything, and suspects everyone. Most of the book is spent talking about how beautiful Abby thinks Eszter was and their courtship and relationships with their parents and how much Eszter loved her muscles and height. I have no beef with lesbian love stories, I just don’t want to read one, especially when I’m expecting a mystery. It’s not even well-written and the title is misleading. I forced myself to finish it since I had nothing else handy – I’d read the last of my book club selections and all my holds at the library were taking forever to come in. One finally did. I’m going there now.