I recently read The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton. This books is a witty and somewhat accurate account of The Great Gold Robbery of 1855 in which £12,000 worth of gold bars were stolen from a moving train. The book details the motivation, planning, and difficulties of the robbery as well as the eventual arrest and escape of Edward Pierce, the mastermind behind it all. A quick and entertaining read, it was filled with clever schemes plus a healthy does of Victorian era factoids and slang. I’d recommend it to anyone looking to read something light, yet clever.

Following the book, I bought the movie which stars Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland, and Lesley-Anne Down. The movie was written and directed by Michael Crichton which must be why it is almost exactly like the book. Once you can get past the grainy picture quality (the DVD obviously wasn’t remastered) and the old-school acting style, the movie is pretty good at bringing out a little extra of the story’s dry wit that you can only get from actors. Personally, I think it’s a good candidate for a remake.

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Two weeks ago I saw I Am Legend, the movie. Last week I read I Am Legend, the novella.

After reading the book, I was surprised my the dissimilarities between the stories. The movie is so different from the book that it may as well have had a different name. There are some common elements, but not many. In both stories, the main character is named Robert Neville, and in both stories Neville must hide from humans infected with a disease at night so that they don’t kill him. And that’s pretty much it.

The movie was good, though I found it disappointing. In essence, the story was a good one that could have been told better. There were too many too-obvious special effects. People in makeup would have been far scarier (and realistic) than the slightly over-the-top and over-stylized CG creatures with super-human powers. A more gritty approach would have brought out more intensity and emotion, which seemed dulled. At several points in the movie I felt “almost but not quite” happy or sad or otherwise empathetic for the main character. Additionally, I felt like something was left out of the film – like some subplot had been eliminated in editing that would have given the film a boost. The movie is rated PG-13, which makes me think that an R rated Director’s Cut would make an excellent DVD purchase, if there ever is one. We’ll see.

The book was also good, but also disappointing in that it gave away the ending way too soon. I’ll go ahead and summarize (err, spoil) it: Neville, out of necessity, kills the infected during the day and sleeps at night only to discover in the end that he himself has become the “vampire” of a new nocturnal society; thus he becomes “legend.” This is a good theme that emphasizes perspective and necessity, but half way through the reader is all but told the “moral of the story” straight-out and given little room to think about it for himself. The second half therefore had me thinking “yeah, yeah, get on with it…” since I pretty much knew the ending and was reading out of self-imposed obligation.

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Today I went to Amazon.com to do a little holiday shopping and the home page was a note about a new gadget called Kindle.

This thing looks so cool!

You can purchase books right from the device without WiFi, read blogs, and look up words you don’t know. The display is about as paper-like as you can get without actual paper and can be easily read in sunlight, just like a regular book. What’s really nice is that there are no subscriptions or fees for network access – it comes with the device!

If I don’t get one for Christmas (hint, hint), I think I’ll get one for myself…

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Last year I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values. This book is a narration of a father’s motorcycle trip across the American northwest with his son. There are many philosophical chautauquas sprinkled throughout the milestones of the trip. More so than it tells a story, the book lays the foundation of a philosophy that seeks to unite themes of eastern and western thought.

About half way through the book, I nearly put it down. I understood what the narrator was saying, but I wasn’t very satisfied with the descriptions. Each idea presented I had heard before, only more eloquently. I continued to read on primarily because I identified with the sense of confusion and frustration portrayed. Then, the book took a turn I did not expect: The narrator stated flatly that his expressions of ideas so far were inadequate!

From that point, the book had me thinking more than any book I had read for a very long time. The chautauquas after this turning point made brilliant use of the inadequacy of the previous ones, which was a relief to say the least. At times I would stop reading, set the book down, and sink deeply into the thoughts it triggered.

The philosophy presented has to do with defining, or rather not defining, Quality (with a capital Q). The concept of Quality is similar to that of Tao. In fact, the Tao Te Ching is heavily quoted in the turning point.

While reading the Wikipedia Article on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I found that there was no link for the term Gumption Trap, so I created one. Though it’s been over a year, the article still needs to be updated with further discussion. I was feeling rather lazy when I wrote it and it lacks Quality.

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Recently I’ve had the need to do some image and photo editing, but Microsoft Paint isn’t really up to the job and I don’t want to spend money on something I don’t plan on being good at.

I started of searching Google and found The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). The GIMP is a lot like Photoshop, except that it’s free. I used it for a while, accomplished a few useful tasks, but found it tedious overall. That’s probably because I don’t know what the heck I’m doing though.

Earlier today I found Paint.NET which was originally intended to replace MS Paint. Although I had already done what I needed using The GIMP, I thought I’d give it a shot anyway. Paint.NET is actually pretty cool! It is more for beginners, so while trying it out I didn’t feel so much like an wandering idiot.

Any way, if you need some good, free image editing software check ‘em out.

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