I have finally finished the monstrous behemoth, Cryptonomicon. I give it two thumbs up! It is a very strange book, and you're never quite sure what it's going to be about. It's totally for geeks. There are charts and graphs as a part of the story, and here's an example of some description: "Goto Dengo is seated underneath a can light in the ceiling. His hair stands perpendicularly out from his head, a bristling stand of normal vectors, radiating halogenically." If you know what normal vectors are, that beautifully and geekily describes this guy's buzz cut. There's a lot like that - the characters are computer geeks of one sort or another (or pre-computer geeks - it takes place both in World War 2 and in the present, but many of the guys in the WW2 part are mathematicians), and it reflects how they see the world.
But I'm not saying it's some dry technical weirdness. It's totally a human story about what these people are going through, a fair dose of romance, some intrigue, and just generally the weirdness of relationships, especially if you're geeky.
So it is a hard read. There's big fancy words, and complex concepts, like a lot of cryptography, only not
nearly as much as you'd expect. But it's so fun, and
so funny. It takes these tangents which can last 5 pages or more, about something completely unrelated to the story, but just a really amusing or interesting side story. It's no wonder it's over 1,000 pages. Never dull. Hooray!
Next up is Downtiming The Night Side, by Jack L. Chalker. I'm pretty sure this will classify as sci-fi shlock. The cover looks like a rejected Dr. Who picture. But I'm game for it, especially since it involves time travel, which is always fun.
Working on the Supreme patch today. There are only 3 items left to deal with. The list of changes is big, but it's nothing exciting except for a couple of small editor features that can make it a little easier to know what you're doing. Mostly bug fixes.
Also today I got Toonyland to where I can play it and my progress is saved, and I get resurrected when I die. So it's finally to where I can actually spend more than 2 minutes playing it, since my effort won't vanish on the next run. I can level up and get some skills, do some quests. It's going well. I put in the first little boss... I haven't been able to beat him though. Those Squeakers are brutal.
