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On Finishing 'Ulysses'
This very name of this blog, "Wandering Rock," comes from one of the chapters in James Joyces's Ulysses. I've been toting around Ulysses, reading a few pages at a time, for years--perhaps as far back as the summer of 1998, when Modern Library named it the best novel of the century. This summer, I finally finished it off. Wow.
For a (very) quick overview of Ulysses, see Ulysses for Dummies, an inspired little cartoon encapsulating each chapter of the novel into one animated gif. It's the early internet at it's best.
I can't say I got a whole lot more than that out of the novel, though. Much of it isn't too tough to read (and the famous final unpunctuated 'Penelope' chapter went surprisingly smoothly), but then you bang up against paragraphis like this:
"INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST THAT IF NO MORE, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see."
And that's just the ineluctable modality of the visible. Wait till you get to the ineluctable modality of the invisible!
But some things did come through - Leopold Bloom's kindness, his longing for is dead son, the streets and people and food and life of Dublin, the many turns of phrase like "Shut your eyes and see."
It's a very deep well - no one gets everything out of it the first time....
Sunday, October 29, 2006
7:21 PM
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New Mac In Town
With some funny sounds coming from my nearly five year old iBook hard drive, and it's 15 Gig full all the time, it was time to buy a new home Mac. So here I am with a brand new Mac Mini 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo with 1GB of RAM, a new Samsung SyncMaster 931b monitor and a MacAlly iKeySlim mouse and keyboard combo. Yep, it started right up and just worked.
Things I like from the get-go:
The new Mac's setup utility copied over my old applications and setting from the iBook as part of it's start-up process, via firewire cable - and I was in business.
The remote control, that handles iTunes playback, along with photos, videos and DVDs, makes the monitor into one big iPod screen. And it scrolls fast!
GarageBand--I've got to hook up my electronic piano!
The speed. Well, of course. It's competing against a 600 MHZ G3 with a half-gig of RAM.
But there have been some issues:
I 'authorized' the Mac for my iTunes account, and I can play all my purchased music without a problem from iTunes itself, but for some reason playing purchased songs via the remote still throws up a "you're not authorized" error.
Even with just the stock OS, I've got a lot of programs that need to be updated via Software Update... that takes awhile.
It's hard to get to one of the four USB ports on the Mini - they're all on the back. I use flash drives and I'm used to plugging them in and out quite a bit with the laptop. I've got to remember I have one free on the back of the keyboard!
The keyboard is soft for typing, but not too bad. I like the mouse, but it's motion is a little rough. Perhaps I need to find a better surface/mousemat for it. Nowadays, there are inexpensive wired mice and keyboards, and expensive wireless ones, with no high-end wired systems in between.
Some of my old software just won't work: Word and Excel 2001, and Graphing Calculator, so far. Of course, I still have the laptop!
7:03 PM
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