Miscellaneous

Upgrades

August Leave a Comment

Tonight (and possibly even tomorrow, depending on how long this takes), I will be attempting to upgrade the blogging software that runs vestige.org. It’s been, well, close to three years since a database failure forced me to upgrade, and in the meantime I’ve missed at least two major updates to the software. According to the instructions provided, I’ll have to upgrade from version 3 to version 4 before moving to version 5, which is the latest release. This will be a tremendous pain in the ass, but hopefully it will allow me greater flexibility for dealing with comment spam and various other housekeeping issues. I’ve been blogging at vestige.org since February 2000, and I haven’t had much luck with upgrades. I’ve lost bits of the database at least twice, the search function was unworkable for close to four years, and I’ve had to rebuild the entire file structure three times,… Continue Reading →

Sundry Things Number Two

August 6 Comments

It’s been quite some time since I posted an entry; no doubt those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter will have simply assumed that I’ve been eaten by dragons, or abducted by aliens, or sequestered in some dungeon by shadowy men in black Ray-Bans. None of these things are true, but they’re rather more interesting than the truth, the truth being that I’ve been struggling with a pretty severe bout of depression for most of the last year and a half (for reasons I have more than once alluded to, but will not go deeper into today), and have done little more than stare glassy-eyed at television and video games. I don’t vilifiy these things the way some do, but I’ve certainly let them take up more of my free time than I should have. Well, to be fair, I’ve also taken up running, but that’s a far… Continue Reading →

Country Mouse, City Mouse: On Reading My Work Aloud

August Leave a Comment

The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol, as translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, changed the way I look at fiction. I read the book first as an undergraduate, and then later as a graduate student. Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translation is astonishing, and I don’t think I’d have connected to the work so strongly if I’d read a lesser version. There’s any number of ways that you can divide up Gogol’s stories, but the obvious way is to place them in the same two categories Pevear and Volokhonsky do; rural Ukranian tales, and urban St. Petersburg tales. Seeing them side by side in that way, the careful reader will notice that the rural/urban division mirrors another division in the tales. The rural tales are very clearly oral in nature. They are loose, fluid, comfortable, adaptable. The urban tales, on the other hand are tight, structured, detailed. They are the very… Continue Reading →

Oops

August Leave a Comment

So for a variety of reasons, I can’t use my credit card this month, and decided instead to pay for my hosting with PayPal. What I didn’t realize, is that transferring money from a bank account to PayPal isn’t instantaneous the way it is from a credit card, or from person to person. Therefore: I won’t be able to pay my hosting bill on time (a whopping $15.38 USD), and my host has informed me that they will be suspending my account until I do. Fair enough. From what I can tell, this will happen sometime tomorrow. My money will not arrive in my PayPal account until Tuesday. This site will be down from tomorrow until probably Wednesday, and I will not be accessible via my normal email address either. If you absolutely must get in touch with me, use my “backup” email address: fishsauce@gmail.com. I appreciate your patience.

Of Silences and Sealing Wax

August 2 Comments

I’d like to apologize for the long silence here at vestige.org; it has been a long, strange summer. I have not stopped reading (slowed, though), and unfortunately the silence may continue for some few days longer. Rest assured that I will return with book reviews and commentary (I already have the whole Salterton Trilogy and half the Deptford Trilogy to write about!). In the meantime, might I suggest a visit to The Literary Type, an excellent new blog operated by the fine folks at The New Quarterly.

What. The. Fuck.

August 1 Comment

I wanted to write about something else today (maybe finish that Bad Behavior review, eh?), but I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore. Or whatever. The truth of the matter is that I saw something that pissed me off, maybe not a huge thing, but big enough, and I’m the kind of dude who likes to stomp around and make a fuss when I’m pissed off. So here’s my fuss. I learned today (and would have learned yesterday, if I hadn’t been ill and skipped some reading), that Penguin has struck a deal with W H Smith to be their sole supplier of travel books. This is a Big Deal. (Canadians might recognize the company from their old Canadian operation, called SmithBooks, which was bought by local owners and merged with Coles to become Chapters. So not small potatoes.) First, W H Smith has a… Continue Reading →

Tweeting Like Nobody’s Business

August Leave a Comment

So I’ve actually had a Twitter account for quite some time, but no real interest in using it. An application called Tweetie launched yesterday that was interesting enough for me to revisit Twitter, and now I’m having great fun with it. So if you’re interested in reading my clever quips, quotations without attribution, and endless ability to complain about the minutiae of life, feel free to follow my Twitter feed. I might even mention books from time to time. Ah, so many things to keep me from reading and reviewing like I should be.

The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization

August Leave a Comment

So I was walking through the lunch room at work on Wednesday, and sitting on one of the tables was the Living section of the Toronto Star. The entire front page of the section, even below the fold, was taken up by colourful photos and sketches of pretty girls wearing short skirts, and the articles were all about how short skirts are the new big thing this year. The entire front page of a section was taken up by this revelation. No wonder people don’t buy the fucking newspaper anymore.

#5 – Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl

August Leave a Comment

When I was in high school I worked in the kitchen of a fast food restaurant. I was happier at that job than at any other job I’ve ever had. I worked with some of my best friends, and we had fun. It wasn’t a hugely demanding job, but it was more challenging than it looks. They weren’t the kind of challenges that I’d look for in a job today, but at the time they were enough. I was happy there, but not fulfilled. The job wasn’t what brought meaning to my life. Happiness, as Frankl correctly asserts, is not everything. It’s not even the most important thing. That’s not something we like to hear in this day and age, but I have no doubt that it’s true, and many of us need to hear it. I’ve been putting off writing this for a long time. I finished reading Man’s… Continue Reading →