Tom's Blog

Let me start this review of Dan Brown's latest novel by saying I read Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code and thoroughly enjoyed the stories and the storytelling. Second, although The Lost Symbol was at times painful to read, I do not join other critics who point out the preachy, moralistic ending. Sometimes we need a reminder to return to the basics of our morality. Finally, I plan to reveal minor details of the book here but I won't disclose any plot twists or surprises.

The Lost Symbol reads as if Dan Brown had been kidnapped and tortured by the Masons, just like one of the characters in the book is kidnapped and tortured by an evildoer, and forced to write this book under duress. Each chapter, while revealing frat-boy antics committed by the Masons during its rituals, also includes what seem to be apologies to the reader for those antics. Brown constantly reminds the reader that Masons have included the geniuses of history, the rich, the politically powerful -- including, he says, most of the high-ranking members of all three branches of the U.S. government. Whenever a character in the book criticizes a Masonic activity, the hero of the book reminds us how warm and cuddly the Masons really are to the point that the subtitle of the book could have been, "Hug a Mason Today."

The constant apologies for the Masons is not why I thought this book was a Brown dud. I actually learned what I hope are facts about Masonic history from this book, which I thought were enlightening and interesting. No, the worst part of this book is the amateurish writing and the forced, silly narrative. Brown wanted to ladle so much history and symbology onto the pages that the hero of the story, Robert Langdon, has to constantly stop and lecture one or more of the other characters in this book on the history of Freemasonry and all the wonderful contributions the world has received unto it by a Mason. We're 30 seconds from the clutches of the bad guys, from whom we are running so we can save someone's life, but wait, let's stop a moment so I can explain in historic detail a particular symbol, or show you this nifty, magical number sequence and spell out in detail why it pertains to our rescue mission. Those stop-and-explain moments clue the reader in early that the tension the author is trying so hard to build must not be really all that tense if the main characters have so much time to marvel over history while being hotly pursued.

To add to the amateurish narrative, the characters, all portrayed as very smart and world-wise, are shocked, shocked! at every predictable turn of events. The characters actually exclaim, quite regularly, "Oh my God!" when something occurs that the readers will have predicted 5 pages ago, pandering to our egos so we can constantly pat ourselves on the back on how smart we are. Langdon, who is surprised the most, has evolved from a savvy, likeable university professor in The Da Vinci Code to a naive, gullible idiot savant. What? You mean this secret package as heavy as a bowling ball, the one my good friend and mentor (and, gasp, a 33rd degree Mason) told me years ago to keep safe and guard with my life because evil people across the entire globe would kill for it, and for which I got a mysterious phone call this morning telling me to bring this vital package to Washington, D.C., this heavy package I have been carrying over my shoulder, which I completely forgot I was carrying even though my shoulder is aching from the weight, might have something to do with why my friend and mentor has been kidnapped? Oh my God! How could this be? I'm shocked! Shocked! And sadly, I'm not exaggerating.

Another example of the irritating writing packed inside The Lost Symbol is that nearly every chapter begins with a retelling of what has occurred up to this point -- just in case the previous section had lulled you into a deep case of neurasthenia and you lost all memory of the previous dozen pages. Why Dan Brown felt he had to constantly summarize previous events is a mystery. If you ignore my suggestion to pass on this book, you will remark to yourself each chapter how you haven't seen such great recapping of events since watching the first three minutes of Batman reruns from the 1960s where they summarize the previous week's cliffhanger.

As the final reader irritation (especially to us in Washington, D.C.), Brown gets some of his D.C. geography, details and landmarks wrong. Here are some of the more obvious factual indiscretions:

• His limo driver takes him from Dulles Airport to the Capitol via an unlikely route: the Dulles toll road to the beltway to the George Washington Parkway, then finally over the Memorial Bridge. Unless I-66 was closed, the limo driver would not have taken the beltway.
• The book says the trip from the airport took a half hour. Not by taking the GW Parkway to the Memorial Bridge it doesn't.
• When Langdon's limo crosses the Potomac, Langdon looks to left of the Lincoln Memorial to see the Jefferson Memorial. Didn't Brown check a map? Or did his researcher mistake the Kennedy Center for the Jefferson? The Jefferson is way over to the right.
• Langdon enters the Capitol Visitor Center on a Sunday and sees tour groups inside the Rotunda. The visitor center is closed on Sundays. There are no public tours.
• Langdon crosses the street from Freedom Plaza and enters the Metro system to get away from the bad guys. The closest Metro station to Freedom Plaza is a couple of blocks away, not across the street.
• When the bad guys try to arrest Langdon as the Metro train pulls into the station, the train conductor is driving from the third car. Metrorail conductors always drive from the first car.
• The metro conductor exits the car without opening the doors. I guess he could have squeezed out the side window, but I think Brown would have included that contortionist trick in the narrative.

Those are a few of the errors a D.C. resident, regular visitor or observant tourist would notice. Since I mentioned a few of the book's D.C.-centric errors, to his credit, Brown does have Langdon notice the hum of the limo's wheels change as he approaches the Memorial Bridge, a sign that Brown knows the road is cobblestone between the Parkway exit and the roundabout approaching the bridge.

Since Brown's previous two books were so much better, I have to ask, What happened? That's why I had to conclude from reading The Lost Symbol that Brown must have been kidnapped by some group intent on rehabilitating the public's view of the Masons after Brown's previous books made these types of secret societies look evil. The real lost symbol of the book is hidden in plain sight. The words on the page, those everyday alphabetic symbols, are Dan Brown's way of crying out to the reader: "Can't you tell from this stilted writing and my obvious mistakes of D.C. geography that any tourist would pick up on that I've been kidnapped and forced to write this? Help me!"

If indeed Dan Brown has been seen in public since the book's publication in September, and he isn't a prisoner of the Masons, the only other reasons I can see for this book being so bad after two previous entertaining novels are:

• The Lost Symbol was a contractual obligation book. Maybe the book was motivated by Doubleday reminding Brown of the $5 million advance and the promise of another $10 million upon delivery of the manuscript.
• This book reflects Dan Brown's actual writing ability, and he got in a major tiff with his editor. The Lost Symbol is the editor's revenge.

Overall, if you still feel compelled to read this book, do like I did and buy the ebook version. At least no tree would have been required to share your suffering. My plea to the Masons: Free Dan Brown before he writes another book.
Saturday December 05, 2009 Permalink Comments [0] For the past few months, tech publisher Manning Publications has impressed me with its marketing push by offering quick-strike discounts on print and ebooks. Until Manning's recent marketing and discounts, I was buying a Manning book maybe once a year, and I almost never bought it directly from the publisher. Instead, I'd usually check sites like BestBookBuys to find who had the title I was looking for at the best price. But with its steep short-term discount offers, and my newfound fondness for ebooks, I have purchased Manning books in recent months on Groovy, Grails, Spring and Ext JS, almost always buying the ebook version for $10 to $15 -- a great price for a tech book.

As part of its marketing push, Manning offers daily and weekly discount codes on its website and Twitter feed. Discounts are often 50% or more from its regular price. Tuesday, for example, the Ext JS In Action ebook for which I paid about $15 a few weeks ago (on discount from $27.50) was on sale for $10. (The book, not yet in print by Jesus Garcia, is a great introduction and explanation on how to use the Ext JS 3.0 component library and the only book I found available at the time covering version 3.0.)

In addition to the book discounts, following Manning's marketing message won me an additional $300. In one of Manning's emails in August, I learned that Manning was holding a monthlong technology quiz in September. Manning posted a question daily on a technology topic related to one of its books, with a $300 grand prize to the contestant who could answer the most questions correctly. The tech quiz was great marketing because it brought me and hundreds of others to the Manning website daily. As a quiz incentive, Manning gave away two ebooks every day to two contestants and offered a daily discount on one or more of its books. After answering 30 technical questions, on topics as diverse as features of ActiveMQ, Clojure and Silverlight, I'm proud to say I walked away as the grand prize winner. The competition was stiff. Manning said it had 1,500 contestants. Toward the end of September, there were still about a dozen people with perfect scores with just days left in the contest. After the final question, only two contestants remained with perfects scores, me and Belgian developer Renaud Florquin. I was lucky to be randomly selected as the grand prize winner. (Thanks again, Manning.)

In addition to improving its marketing and pricing, Manning also has impressed me recently by expanding its ebook file formats. Previously, Manning offered its ebooks only in PDF format. Earlier this month, Manning announced it will begin offering its books in the mobi and EPUB file formats. That's great for me because I like reading books in the mobi format on my BlackBerry using the free Mobipocket reader. Ebooks have won me over from the paper version of tech books because of their searchability, the ability to cut and paste code, and their ultra portability by being on my phone and laptop when I visit customer offices. The mobi format is also supported by the Kindle, while the EPUB format is popular with devices like Sony Reader, the nook and the iPhone.

Keep it up, Manning. If you keep offering good technology books at great prices in flexible formats, I will continue to be a regular customer.
Wednesday November 25, 2009 Permalink Comments [0] The bloom of the Japanese cherry trees in Washington, D.C. is at its peak, so Renee and I went over to the Tidal Basin at dawn this morning to watch the sun come up behind the Jefferson Memorial. We got some nice photos.

I was surprised at how popular the Tidal Basin was at 6 a.m. During the Cherry Blossom Festival, D.C. has turned Ohio Drive SW into a one-way street going north, with parking available on the west side along the Potomac. By sunrise at 6:47 a.m., there almost wasn't a parking spot left. There was a plethora of photographers lined up along the Tidal Basin walking path, all prepared with their tripods and telephotos. Renee set up her tripod near one tree, while I roamed around shooting hand-held, which made for a lot of blurry photos in the pre-dawn twilight. I shot at ISO 800 initially, then switched to ISO 200 in the hopes that it would let me blow-up the photos extra-large without as much graininess. Still, I was shooting at 1/30 of a second and slower for a lot of the early photos. That's what I like about shooting digital: I deleted about 60% of my photos with no thought to all the "film" I wasted.

Visiting the Tidal Basin before dawn to enjoy the cherry blossoms was a good idea. The area around the basin was packed a couple of hours later, with the usual gridlock traffic on Independence Avenue SW and the Memorial Bridge entering the district from Virginia. If you're in D.C. and plan to visit the cherry blossoms on Sunday, definitely arrive early. I saw a lot of cars idling along the Memorial Bridge, slowly crawling toward D.C. -- and probably not finding a close space to park.

I uploaded several of my photos from today and from last weekend to Picasa Web Albums.

Some cherry tree facts: There are 1,678 cherry trees around the Tidal Basin, with more surrounding neighboring roads and parks. Trees originally were planted around the Tidal Basin in 1912 as a gift of friendship from the people of Japan. About 400 of the present trees were propagated from the original 1912 trees. The health of the trees often suffers as a result of their beauty. The crowds who visit the area often tromp around the base of the trees, compacting the soil. The drainage in the area could use some improvement, too, as you'll notice when you have to walk around some of the flooded areas along the Tidal Basin path -- forcing you to compact the soil even more around those trees. New trees need to be planted regularly to replace the suffering ones, which is probably one reason none of the trees you see there are ancient.

If you are interested in planting a Yoshino cherry tree at your home like the ones along the Tidal Basin, the non-profit American Forests sells them online. My "green" plug for the planet.


Saturday April 04, 2009 Permalink Comments [0] I created a Google Alerts to be sent daily to my Google mail account. I received daily emails for a week, then one day it stopped. Turns out Gmail filtered the Google alert to the Spam folder.

When it comes to spam, Google doesn't even trust itself.


Thursday March 12, 2009 Permalink Comments [2] After installing Fedora 10 last month, I finally got the Tomboy note-taking application working. I began using Tomboy in Fedora 8, and have several notes stored in Tomboy notebooks. When Tomboy broke in Fedora 10, I put it on my to-do list to figure out how to get it working. I figured the fix would be as easy as re-installing Tomboy. It wasn't.

Fedora 10 was released three months ago tomorrow. That's why I was surprised to find that reinstalling / upgrading to the latest Tomboy from the Fedora repository didn't fix the bug. Before I fixed the problem, trying to run Tomboy would give me an error like:

** (Tomboy:4816): WARNING **: The following assembly referenced from
/usr/lib/tomboy/Tomboy.exe could not be loaded:
     Assembly:   Mono.Addins    (assemblyref_index=8)
     Version:    0.3.0.0
     Public Key: 0738eb9f132ed756
The assembly was not found in the Global Assembly Cache, a path listed in the
MONO_PATH environment variable, or in the location of the executing assembly
(/usr/lib/tomboy).

Until I saw the error, I didn't even know Tomboy was a .NET application running under Mono. I searched around for a solution to the problem and found the bug has been reported three times to Red Hat Bugzilla, but still no one has solved it. The solution, fortunately, was pretty simple, and was mentioned by Austin Acton in a bug comment. The solution also was mentioned on this blog post by Mark Ito (I'm assuming that's his name from the subdomain).

The solution is to install mono-addins from the 'fedora' repository.

    sudo yum install mono-addins

For such an easy fix, you have to wonder why this 5-month old bug with high severity is still open. Tomboy comes as part of the standard Fedora 10 install. It must not be as easy as making the tomboy package dependent on the mono-addins package.


Tuesday February 24, 2009 Permalink Comments [0]