This is an oldie but it came up in conversation recently, reminding me that I'd been meaning to post about it for years now. No time like the present.

Some of you may know that I have the dubious distinction of being the first person in the world to put a JRR Tolkien fan page on the internet. It is of course long gone, though I'm sure you could find it in the Wayback Machine if you looked. 

Being first means that I got listed first in Yahoo, possibly even back when "Yahoo" was still called "Mike's Guide To The Internet", though I do not remember for certain. For many years my web site was the first Google hit for "Tolkien" as well. 

When news of the movies broke back at the turn of the century, lazy journalists typed "Tolkien" into Google or Yahoo and decided to interview whatever name popped out first. I did maybe half a dozen interviews with professional journalists and heaven only knows how many informal email conversations with fans, English teachers, Tolkien's grandson Royd Tolkien, and the like. It was a fun time.

But of all the articles that I was interviewed for, my favourite (even surpassing the front-page item in my home town newspaper, the K-W Record) was this Knight-Ridder syndicated interview. It's my favourite because of this:

Eric Lippert, who created one of the first Tolkien Web sites in 1993, sees the anti-Tolkien contingent as little more than literary snobs. [...blah blah blah...] Neil Gaiman, author of the fantasy series "The Sandman," said Tolkien "exists outside the orthodox canon of literature. You can't put him in a box." Like Lippert, Gaiman believes that Tolkien's commercial success is what drove his critics to jealous fury.

This is freakin' hilarious. Neil Gaiman is one of the most justifiably famous fantasy authors in the world and a long-established expert on Tolkiana, whereas I'm a guy with a web page and a few dozen books on a shelf. Making that comparison is not unlike saying "Like Lippert, Stephen Hawking believes that the Big Bang Theory is a reasonable model of the early history of the universe."

Thus I am tickled pink to know that Neil Gaiman agrees with me. I'm sure that Neil Gaiman and I agree on many more things too! We probably both love soup, for instance. And snow peas.

Well, I did NOT end up sailing in the national championships unfortunately, but I had a great time nevertheless.

Friday my new friend John and I spent the day on the committee boat, which is one of the marks for the start and finish. Our responsibilities were to identify every boat in the race, run the flags and horns for the start and finish, and note down all the race results. I got to start both of the races, which was quite amusing.  

Unfortunately, the wind died completely during the long distance race and we ended up having to rescue the boats and tow them back. Which led the skipper of the committee boat to tell a story about one time when one of the guys working with him had to tow an i14 sailor home in a windstorm after some bad capsizes in the spring -- uh, yeah, that was me, I rather sheepishly admitted. I am a lot better at handling the boat now, thank goodness. And a lot better at knowing when it is too windy, but I'm anticipating myself, more on that in a moment.

Also unfortunately, my boat -- which I loaned to some sailors from Edmonton -- came in dead last in both races. But they had fun regardless.

Saturday I got a ride crewing for Ken, the new local fleet captain.  It was very, very windy at the start, but we were doing OK right up to the point where we were approaching the starting line. Then the wind hit us like a freight train, we almost capsized, and had to scramble around just to keep the boat upright. Lots of people capsized at that point. The wind just got gustier and the waves got bigger, and we decided that superior sailors exercise superior judgment rather than superior skill, so we bailed out before the race even started.  Six boats followed us home. 

Within about ten minutes, I saw numerous capsizes, one boat hit the beach, one boat hit the breakwater (ouch!), and one of the Edmontonian boats snapped an upper shroud and then immediately afterwards their mast snapped in half. And one guy fell through his mainsail during a capsize.

That was the most major equipment failure. My boat unfortunately suffered some damage as well -- a pulled-out jib sheet cleat, which was easily repaired with a few screws, and the tip of the daggerboard snapped off. Fortunately John Hyde has a spare dagger which fits my boat, so I'll have that handy should I want to go sailing this winter.

Sunday it was even windier, so I skipped sailing altogether (as did most of the fleet) and just helped out-of-towners de-rig their boats and load them up. And I bought a full set of second-hand sails in good condition from Kevin, the guy from whom I bought USA1114 in the first place.

So all in all, a good time. It was great meeting other sailors, I got in one very fast, fun, short sail, and I learned how to run a race.  It was an exhausting weekend but I see why people travel so far for these events.

Hey there fabulous people,

As regular readers know, I will be helping out and possibly sailing in the North American International 14 championships, which will be held at Shilshole Bay on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The race committee is looking for one to three volunteers on Friday who can hang out on the committee boat and assist with scoring, timekeeping, etc. No experience is required -- I certainly do not have any.  I am planning on taking Friday off work and helping out. If you're free and care to join me, I'd love the company. Let me know.  (The event starts at about eleven, so I'm planning on being there from about ten onwards.)

Well that was quite the day.

Got up early. Went to Ballard. Tore up rotten boards off of the 14 fleet dock, sawed them into small pieces, filled four or five dumpsters, cut and screwed down about 50 new boards. Fortunately the rest of the fleet showed up to help so it went fast. But still, many hours of labour.

Then we had a fleet meeting, which went like this:

Brian: I've been captain of this fleet for three years, and we have a new baby, I don't have time to do this any more.  I nominate Ken to be the new captain.

Chris: Seconded.

Ken: Brian, I don't have time to be captain either.

Brian: All in favour?

Everyone but Ken: Aye.

Brian:: All opposed?

[nothing]

Brian: OK, congratulations Ken, this is how I got the job three years ago, you get used to it.  Any other business?  No?  Meeting adjourned!

Then I helped John Hyde run new halyards on his boat.

After that, I asked John if he was interested in taking his boat out for a spin to see if we got all the rigging right. Since I may be sailing in the North American Championships next week in his boat, I figured that a quick shakedown sail was probably a good idea. 

(If I sail in the championships I will crew for a guy from New Jersey who is borrowing John's boat. I in turn am lending my boat to some Calgarians.)

On the other hand, it was blowing 18-21 knots this afternoon, raining, with a front moving in and a strong tendancy towards an easterly. So maybe not such a good idea.

Oh, and did I mention, John is SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD and has been sailing i-14s for 40+ years. A little deaf and not as spry as he once was, but still a fine sailor. Then again, this was his first time sailing in over a year and he was a bit rusty.

So, again, maybe not such a good idea. But, hey, it's an adventure.

And it certainly was an adventure. We capsized once, which was pretty scary. I mean, it was a completely run-of-the-mill ordinary leeward capsize, except that it was with a 75 year old guy in the frigid Puget Sound. It took us two tries to get her righted, but at least we didn't do any up-and-overs, so that worked out pretty well.  I vaulted back into the boat over the side, John swam around to the stern and came in at the transom, it all worked out just fine. But after hauling thousands of ponds of boards around all morning and then getting dunked in the sound, we were both pretty tired and didn't have any more capsizes in us, so we took it easy going back in.

He also "teabagged" me, which was again a bit scary. ("Teabagging" is when the crew's weight brings the boat back towards him and he gets dunked into the water while hanging from the trapeze wire -- like dunking a teabag in water.)  Again, not scary in of itself, but scary in that here I am, falling off the boat, possibly going to bring it over on myself and with a cold, wet senior citizen in the boat.  Fortunately we recovered and did not capsize to windward.

Then dinner with Leah and a classic episode of Dr. Who, and now I'm going to bed.  I ache everywhere...

After watching Superbad the other day I was thinking about Seth's obsession with Evan's mother's breasts when it struck me like a baseball bat from behind how it was that the writers structured the interactions of the three heroes. They used Freud's structural theory of psychodynamics.

Seth represents the id. He is immature, childish, short-sighted, foul-mouthed, only barely concerned with societal norms, and constantly worrying about fulfilling his appetites. He avoids his unpleasant reality by retreating into a juvenile fantasy world full of rude body parts, essentially returning to his childhood.

Evan represents the superego. He is overly mature, parental in attitude towards everyone, obsessed with doing the "right" thing at all times. ("Is this what a smart person would do?" he asks himself when crashing the party.) He continues to be obsessed about doing the right thing even when he gets his chance with his crush. He avoids his unpleasant reality by retreating into high-minded intellectualism and thinking about his future at college.

Fogel/McLovin represents the ego. He is the most adult of the three, suppressing the id's excesses while mediating between the id and the superego in order to keep them both relatively happy. He even has a super-adult extra-mature alter ego to help cope with all of this. McLovin is the only one consistently grounded in reality, living in the present and dealing with situations as they come at him.

How Seth wearing Evan's father's pants fits into this theory, I'm not sure, but I'm working on it.

A reminder for west coast readers: there's a total eclipse of the moon, Tuesday 2 AM PDT until 5 AM.  Should be spectacular if it is not cloudy. If you miss this one, the next one visible in the Americas will be in February.

Woo hoo! I just got my third patent!

I can now add "Type Inference for Object-Oriented Languages" to "Schema-Based Machine Generated Programming Models" and "Document Customization For Transparent Execution On A Client And A  Server", my patents from 2004.

So that means that if you want to infer types, translate XML into classes, or run the same code on the server as you run on the client, you'll have to talk to me about it first, buddy.

I can't help but think that software patents are a bit silly.  But still, the Patent Cube is a nice tangible reminder that we do actually invent stuff around here.

Even a day of modern air travel -- delayed flights, oversold flights, and the luggage guy not being able to tell us whether our luggage was in Toronto or Chicago -- could not completely undo the relaxation of two weeks at the beach.

Highlights: other people's delightful children, kite flying, my cute little Spiers 11 (aka "Gayest Boat On The Beach" for its lovely mauve colouring), old friends, wind, waves, storms, calms, kayaks, long walks in the woods and two uninterrupted weeks with my wife.

It's good to be home, which is not to say that I couldn't use another week.  Or two.

(Photo courtesy Chris.)

“Lippert is an incompetent, an idiot, a failure, a zero.” -- Adolf Hitler

Same to you, jerk.

Every year we have Spring Into Action spring cleaning day at Question House, where we pick a good weekend and put all the crap we don't want anymore on the lawn with a "free stuff" sign.  It is amazing what goes and how fast it goes when it is free! 

Most of it was junk but there were a few nice pieces of furniture in there which I'd been meaning to sell on Ebay or Craigslist or something for years. And see, there's the thing. I reasoned thusly: if you were to come up to me and say "Eric, here's fifty to a hundred bucks, and in return, I want you to store this piece of furniture you don't like in your basement for five or ten years" there is no way I would make that deal. So why would I make that deal with myself? I've been trying to give this furniture away to friends for years, no takers. So, onto the free pile it went, and the small pieces were gone literally within thirty minutes, and everything was gone by the end of the day.

The most amusing exchange though involved the "mystery encyclopaedias".

One day several years ago, I woke up and went out into my yard and discovered that some unknown benefactor had stuck a set of the 1956 World Book encyclopaedia under my hydrangeas. (This, like almost everything else in my life, was profoundly weird to me. But, whatever.) I opened them up, and you know how some smells are so keyed to memory? The smell of the 1956 world book encyclopaedia is very distinctive and it immediately brought me back to sitting in my grandfather's den, opening up the glass fronted bookcase and leafing through their copy of the world book as a child. 

So I stuck them in my basement and did not think about them for several more years. While cleaning out the basement for Spring Into Action day this year I found them again, and decided that you know, the pleasure of having that memory reawoken in such a visceral way is nice and all, but not really worth storing these otherwise pretty useless books. So with a twinge of regret I decided to put them on the free pile along with a whole bunch of other ancient reference books I didn't want anymore. 

While I was putting more junk out onto the lawn a pickup truck drove up and a couple got out. A man and woman, probably mid forties. They started browsing through my stuff and when the guy saw the mystery encyclopaedias he perked right up.  "Hey, the World Book Encyclopaedia!" he said, "My grandparents had a copy of this and I was a really nerdy kid. I loved reading these."

"Open them up and smell them," I suggested.  He did.  

"I have to have these!"

Score!

We put them into his trunk. His wife rolled her eyes a bit, but when pressed, she admitted that as a kid she loved reading through the Guiness Book of World Records. "Well, I have three of them that I'm giving away... " but when I looked on the pile, they had already disappeared. I did however show her my copy of the first edition that Dr. Thingo gave me as a present many years ago. (It was originally called the Guiness Book of Superlatives, and the foreword indicates its purpose: to settle arguments in bars.) 

The wife then pulled a box of Christmas lights out of the pile and started to put them in the truck. "Honey, we don't need any more Christmas lights," opined her husband.

I thought fast. "Hey buddy, she let you take the world book encyclopaedia, the least you can do is let her take the Christmas lights!"

Psychology in action. Now my junk is theirs, and I hope it makes them very happy. 

Due to an odd sequence of unanticipated yet fortunate events, in order to not starve to death, and more generally, symbolically save the entire Jewish race Leah and I worked the door at a rave from midnight until 2 am this morning. (Which was, for me, considerably more fun than the rave would have been; it was pretty freakin' loud in there. And I helped pave the way for the messiah.)

Which is just to say the obvious: it's funny how my life turns out sometimes.

Today was Phinney Garage Sale day, and also Spring Into Action Day at Question House.  The highlight of the day:

Leah has six childrens books, a gift for Kevin and Erika.  There are two ten-year-old girls working the sale.

Leah: How much for these books?
Girl #1: A dollar each.
Girl #2: [stage whisper] That's too much! She'll never go for that.  Tell her two bucks for the whole bunch.
Girl #1: I'm going to ask my mom.
[run run run run run]
Girl #1: Mom says ten cents each.
Eric: Sold! Wow, you girls are good hagglers!