Michael Blowhard has a neat post proclaiming the greatness of light entertainment–of authors like Ngaio Marsh and P.G. Wodehouse. It should come as no surprise to anyone that I think he’s got something.

Read the comments, too.

A couple of days ago, there appeared on Brandywine Books a
conjecture as to a couple of plot changes in Peter Jackson’s film The
Two Towers, to wit, why does Faramir take Frodo back to Osgiliath,
and how come the Ents first decide not to march on Isengard only to
change their minds “hastily”. I thought his conjecture was plausible,
but I’m a book guy not a film guy, so I challenged Ian Hamet, whom as we all know
is a film guy, to give his opinion.

Ian responded with a detailed
and informative post in which he dissects the forces acting on the
screenwriter and director who have the unenviable task of cutting a
massive novel down to size. I won’t repeat his observations here; you
should go read them. But I do have a few comments.

First, I understand that very few novels can be translated to the screen
without significant changes. The two media are extremely different, and
the way in which you tell a story is different. That’s fine, and I don’t
have any trouble with many of the changes that were made for this reason.
As an example, Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring includes many
scenes of Saruman and Isengard that are simply not in the book–but they
are consistent with what we eventually find out in the book. That’s telling the
story in a different way, and it works, and it’s appropriate.

But my view is, if you’re going to bother creating a screen adaptation of
a well-know and much loved novel, you had best tell the same story. Your
inventions should, if at all possible, be consistent with the facts of
the novel; and if they are not consistent with the facts, they should at
least be consistent with the spirit of the novel. And if they can’t be
consistent with the spirit of the novel, they should at least make sense in the context of the movie.

Let’s take the Ents’ decision to march on Isengard upon seeing the
devastation created by Saruman, immediately after the Entmoot decides to
do no such thing. Ian’s opinion is that this is a case of “show, don’t
tell;” the Entmoot’s close decision in favor of not marching is
overturned by showing them–and us–what Saruman has been doing to Fangorn
Forest. Now, I agree with Ian thus far–the devastation, and the Ents’
reaction to it, needs to be shown visually. But I think it could have
been shown without requiring the Ents to make a snap judgement, something
that Ents simply don’t do. For example, the Ents could have closed the
Entmoot with the resolution to investigate further–and then been roused
to full anger when they saw the devastation.

But this is a lesser sin; it bugs me, but in general the right stuff
happens.

Next, take Faramir. Faramir’s purpose in the book is as a constrast to
Boromir. Both are brave; Faramir is also wise. Jackson’s changes relieve Faramir
of a great bit of his wisdom, and weaken the character (among other
things, as we shall see).

Ian argues that Faramir’s decision to take Frodo to Osgiliath adds drama
to Sam and Frodo’s story, drama that is badly
needed there since Jackson moved the Shelob’s Lair sequence that ends Tolkien’s
The Two Towers to the third movie. (Ian explains why moving
Shelob to the third movie was reasonable, and I rather agree with him.)
Ian claims that without the extra drama, Sam and Frodo would have spent
the last half of the movie doing a lot of boring clambering about on
rocks, and the scene with Faramir would have been devoid of drama.

I’m inclined to disagree–and I don’t think Jackson’s feel for how much drama
is needed in a given scene is all that good. Witness, for example, the
collapsing staircase at the end of the Moria sequence in The
Fellowship of the Ring. Our heroes have just fought a cave troll,
Frodo has apparently been impaled, they are being chased by orcs, and
they are about to face a balrog. No additional drama was required.
Similarly, when the balrog’s whip catches Gandalf, he clings to the cliff
for agonizingly long moments; I think it would have been more effective
(as well as truer to the book) if he’d shouted “Fly, you fools!” as he
was falling into the depths, Doppler shift and all.

In fact, I think the Faramir sequence has scope for plenty of drama
without changing its nature; for example, Jackson could have made Faramir
much more reluctant to let Gollum go.

But that’s not the real reason I complain about the Faramir sequence; I
complain about it because it ends up with Frodo in Osgiliath and seen to
be there by a Ringwraith. This simply makes no sense.

First, Jackson is ridiculously bad at conveying how large a place Middle
Earth is. The battle scenes in The Return of the King, for
example, make it look like Minas Morgul is about ten miles away from
Minas Tirith; in fact, it’s about fifty miles. Having Frodo take a
detour to Osgiliath without paying any real time penalty for it is typical.

But OK; grant that the distance is negligible. What’s unforgiveable
about the sequence is the scene in which the Ringwraith confronts Frodo.
As I recall, Frodo is standing on top of a wall, completely exposed. The
Ringwraith has very likely seen him before, at Weathertop; but would
definitely sense the Ring anyway. You can’t tell me that the Ringwraith
wouldn’t have stooped on Frodo like an owl on a mouse and carried him off
to Mordor. Pffft. End of story. Dramatic, yes–but also, absurd and
nonsensical.

Back to you, Ian.

The drummer fires a gun as a gimmick during the swing band’s final
number, and the accordion player falls down, dead. Who loaded the
gun? And why? Enter Inspector Alleyn.

As always with Marsh’s mysteries, the pleasure is equally divided
between the puzzle and the vivid characters, and that’s no less true
in this case. It’s a fun book, and I enjoyed it.

At the same time, there’s a false note about the whole thing. The plot involves
a swing band and its members, back in the late ’30’s when swing
was most popular. And though Marsh clearly did her homework, you can’t
help feeling that she found the whole idea of swing music distasteful;
not only do most of the characters find it an ill-sounding noise, the
auctorial voice does as well. I suppose it’s not surprising; swing must
have seemed considerably more dangerous back then, and the bandsmen in
the story are a bit of a sordid lot. It would be rather like writing a
mystery about a rock’n’roll band when Jerry Lee Lewis still the marrying
kind.

Brandywine Books has an interesting take on Peter Jackson’s handling of Faramir and the Ents in his movie of The Two Towers.

Hey, Ian–whaddaya think? Has Phil got something, or is he all wet?

Partway in this book, our hero Sir Apropos of Nothing travels into the
Tragic Waste, and I can’t help thinking that that is, indeed, apropos.

The book begins with a ridiculously obscene satire on The Lord of the
Rings. I suppose it was funny if you like that sort of thing; I
thought it was marginal at best. Not, I hasten to add, because I think
Tolkien is above being satirized; but because David elevates a
not-very-good dirty joke into an entire chapter.

It improves after that, but you still end up with the same kind of uneven
tone the previous book had–it’s trying to be farcical and serious at the
same time. Not even P.G. Wodehouse could do that successfully.

I don’t know what it says that I’ll probably buy the next book in the
series when it comes out in paperback.

Collected Miscellany has a couple of posts on the writing of history. The first points out that history is about determining and recording historical truth–not about exporting present day politics into the past. This should go without saying. The second champions narrative history, to which I say “Hurrah!”.

There’s a place for non-narrative history–it can usefully condense, summarize, and analyze the primary sources in a particularly area, and make them accessible to a wider group of historians. But for communicating our past history to those who need to know it and make use of it–the rest of us, that is–nothing succeeds like narrative history.

Which reminds me, I just got a copy of William Manchester’s A World Lit Only By Fire. Why am I blogging when I could be reading?

Over here, Jaquandor (BTW, is that pronounced Jock-on-dor or Jak-wan-dor?) discusses whether blogging is bad for writers. It seems a correspondent had suggested that blogging is simply another form of procrastination, and of no benefit to a professional writer.

It seems to me that there are two aspects to this question: first, is
blogging beneficial to one’s writing? And second, is blogging beneficial
to one’s career? Certainly, while one is blogging one is not trying to
find an agent, sending out manuscripts, or writing salable prose. I can
see that for some writers, blogging might be a dangerous distraction.

But, not being a professional writer, I’m more interested in the first
aspect–how does blogging affect my writing skills? And I think the
answer is simple: if the three most important words in Real Estate are
“Location, location, location,” then the three most important words in
writing are “practice, practice, practice”. If you wish to write clearly
and well, you can never get too much practice in putting your thoughts
and visions into words. And if you approach blogging with that in mind,
then it is excellent practice. The daily format is especially helpful at
turning writing from being something you do every now and then, when
especially inspired, into something you can do whenever you like.

The horror of every student is the five or ten or twenty-page
paper. I still remember my surprise when, some five years or so into my
career as a software engineer, I realized that I was often writing
documents of much greater length than that. That was my first
lesson–writing is much easier if you have something to say. And the
great advantage of doing technical writing is that it emphasizes clarity
and directness, two qualities I find valuable in any kind of writing.

I’m a history buff; I once brought home a copy of the celebrated Hobbes
translation of Thucydides. I soon discovered that Hobbes’ translation is
celebrated because of Hobbes’ Herculean command of English prose style, a
style fraught with sentences containing seemingly dozens of
clauses–Herculean, because only a Superman can do the necessary heavy
lifting. It’s the sort of writing where you need to read each sentence three times to
be sure you understand it; and it takes you twenty minutes because the
sentences are so long. It might, perhaps, be an accurate reflection of
the original Greek; but it’s no kind of way to read Thucydides, and to
date I haven’t done so.

But I digress.

A little over seven years ago, I started writing and publishing
book reviews on the web. I started out updating the website daily (it
was nearly a proto-blog in that regard) but after a few months gravitated
to a monthly format. At the end of each month I’d sit down with the
stack of books I’d read during the month, and spend several hours
reviewing each one. I don’t claim that every review was a miracle of
clarity and style, but over time it, along with my technical writing,
taught me to write on demand. Writer’s block be damned!

In fact, I think writer’s block is widely misunderstood. A few years
ago, when I began to write more seriously, I read quite a few books on
the subject. There’s a certain category of book–I’m thinking of
Writing Down The Bones and So You Want To Write that treats
writing as a semi-mystical activity. These books emphasize something
they call “writing practice”, which amounts to written free-association.
The goal is to stifle one’s “inner editor,” that little voice that says,
“This is garbage!” and to write down the contents of one’s heart before
it can be censored or edited.

I tried doing this kind of writing practice, and I did not find it
particularly helpful. Indeed, I’m not entirely sure what it’s supposed
to accomplish–unless it is simply intended to help those who have never
written to get words down on paper, so that they see that they can. For
my part, I cherish my inner editor. For me, it’s that little voice that
says, “That sentence is too long. Delete those three words and that
comma, and it’ll say the same thing.”

Or perhaps it’s a way for people to practice writing when they don’t have
anything in particular to say. And that, I think is the key to writer’s
block, and the prime difference between writing fiction and non-fiction.
For non-fiction, such as a book review or a technical document, the
material is before you. You must put it in some kind of order, and
present it clearly, but the content already exists. Your concern as a
writer is not what to say, but how to say it, and in what order.

When writing fiction, however, the material must be made up. Figuring
out what happens next is hard; writing it down is relatively
easy–provided you’re used to expressing your ideas and visions in words.

And that’s where blogging helps. It’s practice at the craft of writing,
at training the words to be your servants rather than your master. And
then, when the muse strikes and you’re ready to perpetrate some
literature, your servants stand ready.

This is really quite amazing. They’ve found the remains of one of the three escape tunnel dug for the real-life escape attempt the inspired the movie The Great Escape. There were three tunnels, Tom, Dick, and Harry; Tom was discovered by the Germans and collapsed, and Harry is the one they escaped through. Dick was abandoned before completion, and used to store supplies and dump sand from the other tunnels. No one ever found it…until now.

As I related in Part 1, I brought home an HP PSC 2510 All-In-One
PhotoSmart printer that prints, scans, copies, faxes, and reads digital
camera memory cards, and has both USB and wireless interfaces. I was
overjoyed, because I’d gotten the wireless model for the price of its
wireless-less sibling.

Later the next morning, I wasn’t so happy. The copying worked OK, and I
could print stuff using it, but the photo quality was, frankly, lacking.
Even with the special photo ink cartridge and premium photo paper, and
the proper print settings, the photo prints were clearly pixelated if you
looked closely. Arrgh! More than that, I couldn’t use the scanner at
all; every time I started the HP scanning software it would just sit
there and twiddle its thumbs until I killed it.

I checked the HP website; sure enough, there was a new printer driver
available as a 71 megabyte download. Why they needed 71 megabytes, I
have no idea. But it was dated 12/30/2003, comfortably after the release
of the latest version of OS X, and it seemed likely that if nothing else
it would fix the scanning problem. (I’d resigned myself to living with
the print quality issues.) But all I’ve got here is a dial-up line; 71
MB would take hours.

Not to worry; yesterday evening I bopped over to my friend Dave’s house,
and used his DSL line. (I digress: Apple hardware and software are truly
wonderful. When it was time to go, I simply closed my laptop, putting it
to sleep, and went to Dave’s house. When I got there, I opened it again,
and was immediately on the ‘Net via Dave’s wireless network. No muss, no
fuss, and it works every time.) I downloaded the new driver; it also
turned out that Apple had some OS updates to download that included
printing improvements, so I made sure to snag those as well.

By the time I got home, it was too late to try anything more, so I went to bed.

This morning, after taking Dave to school, I got down to business, and
installed the new driver. As soon as it was done, I tried to scan–and
it worked flawlessly. Two points for HP. Then, just to see, I made yet
another test print on the nice photo paper–and the pixelation was gone.
The print was lovely.

Whoo-hoo!

But third time’s the charm. Not wanting to borrow trouble, I’d been
using a USB cable to talk to the printer. Now that everything else
seemed to be working, it was time to try the wireless interface. And
here’s where the story gets really exciting.

The HP manual offers detailed instructions for how to set up wireless
printing with a WiFi base station. I didn’t follow them. I read them
just enough to glean a few important facts:

• How to enable the printer’s WiFi interface, which is disabled by
  default.
• That once the interface is enabled, the printer will allow
  ad-hoc connections from any wireless computer in the vicinity,
  without going through a base station.
• That the printer’s networking features can be set up via a built-in
  webserver, whose address is included on a Networking Configuration report
  you can have the printer print out.

So happens, Mac OS X supports ad hoc wireless networks seamlessly.
I simply:

1. Wrote down the name and WEP password for my Airport Base Station.
2. Selected “hpsetup” from the Airport menu on my menu bar.
3. Pointed my web browser at the web address on the Networking
   Configuration report.
4. Clicked a few times, and typed in the name and WEP password for my
   Airport Base Station.
5. Selected my normal wireless network from the Airport menu on my menu
   bar.

And bang. The new printer was now available to me over my wireless LAN.

There are a number of reasons why my old Epson printers didn’t get much
use. The primary reason, of course, is that I only want to print stuff
every so often. But on top of that, I use a laptop, and I hate being
tied to my desk–and that USB cable tied me to the desk. And I hate
having to get out the paper and load the printer–which I always had to
do, because if I left the paper in the printer the dust cover made it
curl up. Thus, there’s always been a sizeable psychological barrier to
actually sitting down and printing anything.

So ironically, the new printer I bought in hopes that it would be more
reliable than its predecessors when used only rarely will almost
certainly get considerably more use than its predecessors.

Anyway, color me one happy camper.

Some while back I mentioned that I hate my
printer. I got a number of good suggestions for a replacement; in
particular, most people had had good luck with Hewlett-Packard inkjets.
Now, I’ve got a good history with HP; I had a couple of their early
injkets (the Deskjet and the DeskjetPlus), and we have a Laserjet 4
that’s still working fine after something like 15 years. At this point
I’m sure it will obsolesce before it wears out.

I got my first color inkjet shortly after getting my first digital
camera; it was a Canon of some kind. I didn’t get an HP because at that
time HP’s color inkjets were lagging, and printers that could reproduce a
photo nicely were rare. The Canon’s print quality was OK for its time,
if not outstanding, but I was continually having problems with it–every
so often the it would start garbling the data sent to it. Or perhaps the
computer was garbling the data; I never did figure it out.

I replaced the Canon with an Epson Stylus Photo 700, which printed
beautiful photos and got irredeemably clogged if you didn’t use it often
enough, which I didn’t. I replaced it with a rather less expensive Epson
(The 888? I don’t remember.) It produced adequate prints, and suffered
more or less the same fate. I replaced it with yet another inexpensive
Epson, the C-82, which is the one I wrote about last time. It has
multiple problems: it clogs regularly, and sometimes in mid-job, and it
doesn’t play well with Mac OS X 10.3–nor is any new driver forthcoming
from Epson. I installed a third party printer
driver that solves the driver problem, but given how much ink and paper
costs, the mid-job-clogging problem is enough
reason to look for another printer.

You’ll note that that was three Epsons in a row to go south. Even I
couldn’t ignore that. The picture quality is great, and inkjet printers
are ridiculously inexpensive these days, but they are not quite
disposable.

So. Time to look for another printer.

On Wednesday, whilst our three older kids were all in school, Jane and I
took little Mary off to the mall for a stroll and a road-test of our new
Urban Assault Stroller. While there we stopped off at the Apple Store,
where I investigated the printer aisle. “Naturally,” I reasons, “If they
sell the printer at the Apple Store, they expect it to work with their
latest OS!”

(Whether this was a valid assumption shall be seen anon. Foreshadowing:
your guide to quality literature.)

(The line about “foreshadowing” is a quote–10 points to anyone who can
identify the source.)

The Apple Store had Epson, Canon, and HP printers. Given my past history
with Epson and Canon, and the good words folks had for HP, I decided I’d
give the HPs a serious look. And the one that really caught my eye was
the PSC 2410.

The PSC 2410 is an All-in-one printer: it prints, scans, copies, and
faxes. I’ve previously avoided this kind of beast–jack-of-all-trades,
master of none–but this one is part of HP’s PhotoSmart line, implying it
should print photos nicely. In addition, it accepts digital camera
memory cards, allowing you to make prints directly, without benefit of
computer. And the scanner is a really nice feature. (I’ve got a scanner
that I never use. It lives in a box, because I don’t have room to leave
it out all the time. Because it’s in a box, I never use it. It probably
doesn’t work with OS X anyway.) In addition, the paper feed for HP
printers is on the bottom, instead of sticking up in the back. This is
good; it means that I don’t need to take the paper out when I put the
dustcover on the printer.

The price for the PSC 2410? $299.

I decided to think about it, and to check prices elsewhere. A little web
research, and I determined that yes,
indeed, the printer is well-thought-of, and that yes (surprisingly) $299
is a reasonable price. OK, I said; I’ll get one.

Now, the Apple Store is at a mall about thirty minutes from our house.
On the other hand, there’s an Office Depot five minutes from our house.
Feeling slightly guilty (the Apple salesman was extremely helpful,
and really deserved to make the sale) I stopped off at Office Depot and
took a look around.

And stopped dead in my tracks. You see, the PSC 2410 has a big brother,
the 2510, that allows you to print, scan, and so on over a wireless
network. It usually sells for $100 more than the 2410, and though I’m
big on wireless I wouldn’t spend an extra $100 to get a wireless printer.
But Office Depot had a special sale on HP wireless printers–in short, I
bought a PSC 2510 for the same price as a PSC 2410. Good stuff. Plus,
Office Depot has all of the HP paper and inks. I got a ream of Bright
White inkjet paper, a package of Premium Glossy photo paper, and some
ink, and headed home.