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Sep. 19th, 2011 11:13 pmThe danger of reading a book while sitting in front of my laptop is that I occasionally try to turn the page by hitting the "page down" button on my keyboard.
In other news, I've been reading Neal Stephenson's Anathem. I quite liked this passage: "I...took out the cartabla and figured out how to use its interface. This took longer than I'd expected because it wasn't made for literate people. I couldn't make any headway at all with its search functions, because of all its cack-handed efforts to assist me." [335, American paperback] Which is pretty much how I felt about Macs (although I know that won't be true for all people, of course). I have to say, also, that I didn't expect this book to be as funny as it is. The things I'm remembering right now are a herd of livestock described as "so tough and emaciated they looked like jerky on the hoof" and a rather sheltered scientist who wants to navigate by building a sextant from first principles.
In other news, I've been reading Neal Stephenson's Anathem. I quite liked this passage: "I...took out the cartabla and figured out how to use its interface. This took longer than I'd expected because it wasn't made for literate people. I couldn't make any headway at all with its search functions, because of all its cack-handed efforts to assist me." [335, American paperback] Which is pretty much how I felt about Macs (although I know that won't be true for all people, of course). I have to say, also, that I didn't expect this book to be as funny as it is. The things I'm remembering right now are a herd of livestock described as "so tough and emaciated they looked like jerky on the hoof" and a rather sheltered scientist who wants to navigate by building a sextant from first principles.