Categories
books

Unfinished Tales

Author
J.R.R.Tolkien
Editor
Christopher Tolkien
On Goodreads [goodreads.com]

Until the publication of The Children of Hurin a few years ago, Unfinished Tales was the third piece of the Middle-earth trilogy. Paired with The Lord of The Rings and The Silmarillion [confusion.cc] it was a bit of a third wheel; comprised of various stories in different states of completeness with some editorial comments by Christopher Tolkien needed to bridge the gaps and contradictions left by the myriad versions Tolkien authored of most of these stories.

Unfinished Tales actually includes my favorite of all of Tolkien’s writing. What I consider the be the best high fantasy ever: “Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin”. Versions of this story date back as far as 1911 and it is the birth of Middle Earth. It is an ultimate tragedy that Tolkien never finished the tale – “Of Tuor and The Fall of Gondolin” – to his satisfaction. I wish Christopher Tolkien could piece together a completed tale as he did with The Children of Hurin expanding the story in Unfinished Tales of “Narn i Hîn Húrin (The Tale of the Children of Húrin)” a related story to Tuor’s.

If you enjoy the window into Tolkien’s mind and the development of the Middle-earth “legendarium”. Then you can dive off the cliff into the massive 12 volume History of Middle Earth that Christopher Tolkien published in the late ’80s and early ’90s. An impressive read which I should attempt again as I’ve forgotten more of it than I remember.

Categories
photography

Green Leaf, Water Drops

IMG_5116
Categories
ranting

One of those days…

Ever had a feeling that tomorrow was going to be one of those days?

One of those days...
Categories
ranting

17,524

17,524

17,524. One thousand, five hundred and twenty four. Hours. In meetings.

Man-hours mind you, not my hours, but; holy shit. Can you imagine if I represent the average employee of my company? My company has about 20,000 employees. 20,000 * 17,524 is 350,480,000 man hours per month. (P.S. These numbers are for this month and many of my meetings are scheduled only a few days in advance…) When the fuck does the work get done?

Categories
ranting

The Internet, almost, never forgets

The Voyager spacecraft is the furthest man-made object in the universe. There’s a chance it could be found by another civilization. The Voyager record was designed as an album that conveyed information about planet Earth. It was an analog device. Digital is harder for long-term storage.

There’s a common belief that things that get put online always stay there. But “the Internet never forgets” is simply not true. The Internet forgets all the time. Intuitively we don’t think there is a problem. But if we are trying to tell stories and leave a legacy online it’s a real problem.

Anytime Mickey Mouse is in danger of following into the public domain, copyright law is extended. If your content came after Steamboat Willy, you can have copyright forever.

Luke Wroblewski’s notes [lukew.com] All Our Yesterdays a presentation by Jeremy Keith at An Event Apart in Boston, 2011

All the notes are worth reading… so go read them, I’ll be here when you get back.

Done? Good. So the second quote reminded me of my post The Internet Never Forgets [confusion.cc] (You can see how that would remind me, yea?)

I still stand by what I said in that post — the internet never forgets, and you should never commit anything to writing you would not want read back to you in court. But maybe the law of the Internets’ memory should be, in the spirit of the Internet, mashed up with Murphy’s Law; The Internet never forgets things you wish it would and you can’t be sure it will remember the things you want it to.