How to Use Your Google Account for OpenID

Copy and paste this url into the form field:

https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id

Note that this isn't a link to a web page, it's a link to a web authen­ti­ca­tion service–you're not doing any­thing wrong when you click it and it doesn't show you a web page.


Review of "The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami

I'm embar­rassed to admit that I picked this book up on a whim. At the time, rec­om­men­da­tions from friends felt too famil­iar, so I asked the staff at Brook­line Book­smith to find me a good read, with the hopes of dis­cov­er­ing some­thing I wouldn't oth­er­wise find. At the time, Murakami hadn't hit big yet —


Review of "His Majesty's Dragon" by Naomi Novik

Brightly writ­ten, started off with ter­rific pace. Strong nar­ra­tive voice, strong tone that made the Napoleonic era feel real. Won­der­ful atten­tion to detail in the set­ting. Then sud­denly down­shifted into what I can only call the getting-ready-for-a-long-series pace. The end­ing was a com­plete surprise–not the con­tent, but: “Oh. Oh! So that must have been the


Personalization and Co-opted Affection

I’ve had my Nexus One (the cur­rent google­phone) for a cou­ple of months now, and it's been enjoy­able. I bought it know­ing that it’d be a useful toy.


DNS resolved

My friend has been host­ing my dns res­o­lu­tion for many years, includ­ing long peri­ods of inter­net dis­in­ter­est. He recently had some prob­lems with his server farm; it's back now, and so am I.


Finding a Great Author

The author is John Scalzi. I recently fin­ished his first book "Old Man's War" and the fol­lowup book "The Ghost Brigades". It's like dis­cov­er­ing a favorite new fla­vor of ice cream that you didn't know about. I'll write a full review later, but it's great when you fin­ish a book and you rush online to


Review of "Darkly Dreaming Dexter" by Jeff Lindsay

Decon­struct­ing books is never fun, so I'm not going to go on about why this one doesn't work. If you have any inter­est in this book, watch the Show­time series instead. The series takes every­thing good in this book and builds on it, adding com­plex­ity, struc­ture, and nuance where they were absent in the book.


Review of "Shadow and Claw" by Gene Wolfe

I was aware before start­ing Shadow and Claw that it was not pedes­trian fic­tion. It is not some­thing to plow through, or relax with. It is an allegory-heavy, lit­er­ary, fan­tas­tic tale. Hav­ing said that, it's about a tor­turer who is exiled from his guild, ends up with a mys­te­ri­ous and pow­er­ful relic, and then sleeps


On Reviews and Reviewing

I'm a fan of reviews and thought­ful crit­i­cism. I also like to write reviews, but I've had a hard time fig­ur­ing out what to do with them.


Akismet def. Spam

Has spam been solved? This blog is both young and mostly dor­mant, as I chase two young kids and ren­o­vate this old house and catch up at work. Still, the spam trick­les in all the same. None has got­ten through. Go go Akismet!