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Year: 2007

The Lost Book Club

February 14, 2007 • • 5 Comments

Update: Click here for the new Lost Book Club index page. I am no longer updating this page.

Last May, I started writing about the books that appear on ABC’s Lost.

Here’s a list of what I’ve read with links to the posts about the books:

Here’s what I still need to read (or skim over again before writing about):

  • Our Mutual Friend (Dickens)
  • On Writing (King)
  • Laughter in the Dark (Nabokov)
  • The Fountainhead (Rand)
  • Evil Under the Sun (Christie)

I will update this post as I read and review the Lost books, and as other books appear.

Speak

February 13, 2007 • • 91 Comments

I finally got around to reading Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, which has been sitting in my borrowed book pile for years. A friend recommended it to me and wouldn’t take it back until I’d read it. I’ve also had many a student (mostly girls, mostly struggling) tell me I should read it because it’s just about the best book ever written.

And so, in order to clear some shelf space, the time finally came. It only took a few hours to read this award winning book for young adults (the marketing term for teens), and I found myself wondering why I’d put it off so long.

Melinda Sordino is a freshman at a Syracuse high school whose friends have all given her the shaft after she called the cops and busted up an end-of-summer party. Now she’s totally alone and carrying a devastating secret. She withdraws deeper into herself, afraid to speak the truth about what happened that night.

Speak is written in a breezy and darkly humorous style that draws the reader deep into Melinda’s anguished world. It wasn’t hard to figure out her secret, but then I’m pretty familiar with kids like Melinda. In that respect, Anderson has done a great job creating the world of high school life from an outsider’s point of view.

I loved the way she used the changing seasons, which reminded me of how school feels at different points of the year when you live in a place that actually has seasons. It isn’t until spring that anyone comes back to life and so it was with Melinda.

Many times, I’ve noticed kids wandering the halls at school, crushed by burdens they shouldn’t have to bear, unable to get out and slowly being eaten alive from the inside. You see it everyday in schools, but sometimes it’s easy to forget that survival sometimes has to take precendence over schoolwork. Books like Speak remind us that many kids carry deep, dark secrets.

Art and literature are powerful things; they can save lives. I’ve had kids tell me that this book saved them, and I can see why. It’s an engaging book that offers hope and gives strength.

Yesterday, I bought a copy for my classroom.

Update 5.4.05: Thanks to Mr. Powell for making this post an assignment for his English class, and thanks to his students for all their wonderful comments. I posted a general response here.

Idyll

February 12, 2007 • • Leave a comment

The ducks on our pond float south for the moment. When they reach the end of the pond, they fly north to ride the windblown current south again.

All day, long and lazy, this short migration is what they do.

I’d like to offer them a beer.

Geeking Out for Greyhounds (or, My First and Probably Only WordPress Plugin)

February 12, 2007 • • 2 Comments

Each week, when I do Weekend Hound Blogging, I insert the following at the end of the post:

[saveagrey]

This requires me to find an old post, copy and then paste the text into the new post. Surely, thought I, there must be an easier way, which got me thinking about trying to create a plugin to do that for me.

I studied some of the simpler in-post plugins I already use and tried to decipher the PHP.

I read “Writing a Plugin”, studied the “Plugin API” page and “Plugin API/Hooks”on the WordPress site, as well as “How to Write a Simple WordPress Plugin” on Asymptomatic. Then, I started putting together a PHP file, tinkering and playing until I eventually had a plugin that allows me to type:

[ saveagrey ]

(without the spaces) and have this appear:

[saveagrey]

The cool thing is that it can be easily changed so that the text and links go anywhere or say anything, which might make this useful for anyone who occasionally wants some message at the end of certain posts such as vote for so-and-so at the end of all political posts or something to that effect.

This little exercise was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed trying to decipher the PHP since I know nothing about that language. Ultimately it became something of a puzzle that could only be solved through logic. When I figured out the solutions to the problems I encountered, I was rewarded with something that will save me time and possibly be of use to anyone who uses WordPress and wants to help save retired racing greyhounds.

So, there it is. My first plugin: Save a Greyhound (click to go to the download page)

WordPress 2.1 Easter Eggs

February 11, 2007 • • Leave a comment

This is kind of stupid: Very useful features are hidden in WordPress 2.1 as “easter eggs”

Via Weblog Tools Collection and ReviewSaurus, I have learned that hitting ‘alt v’ (shift alt v in Firefox) while in the post editor brings up a variety of useful features such as underlining, changing text color, insert custom characters (©, œ, ü, ∞, ½, etc.) as well as some features forpasting from Word (which is useful for me since I sometimes write my posts in word) or pasting as plain text. You can also create headings and the like.

These are great features and shouldn’t be hidden. I wonder what else we’re missing out on.

Update: The Visualize Advanced Features plugin makes all of this visible.

Old Photo Friday

February 9, 2007 • • 2 Comments

Sometimes the sunsets around here make me think of Jupiter, and I wonder what it would be like to live on a moon orbiting a gas giant.

I took a color photography class as an undergrad in ’92. This was in that box. I’m sure I made the image during that semester, probably in Round Rock. It could be anywhere, but the houses in the background feel like Round Rock to me.

The print was too big for the scanner so it’s cropped a bit from the original, in which the tree isn’t quite as centered.

Friday Random Ten

February 9, 2007 • • Leave a comment

An interesting and unexpected, though not entirely American nor analog, set…

  1. “Devilette” – Donald Byrd – Talkin’ Verve
  2. “Berserker” – The Sleepwalkers* – Clocks and Calendars
  3. “(Used to Be A) Cha Cha” – Jaco Pastorius – Jaco Pastorius
  4. “Lester” – Spring Heel Jack – Disappeared
  5. “Immaculate Heart 1” – The American Analog Set* – Set Free
  6. “Celestial Terrestrial Commuters” – Mahavishnu Orchestra – Birds of Fire
  7. “Bottle of Smoke” – The Pogues – If I Should Fall from Grace with God
  8. “Elevator Up” – Fountains of Wayne – Out-of-State Plates
  9. “Spear for Moondog, Part 1” – Jimmy McGriff* – Electric Funk
  10. “All Along the Watchtower” – Bob Dylan* – Essential Bob Dylan

* artists I’ve seen live