Good News, Everyone! I've Taught The Toaster To Feel Love!

So, uh, what was up with the test entry the other day?  Well, to put it simply, I've been fiddling around with MovableType plugins, and I needed somewhere to test some of my new tags and filters out.  The API isn't too bad, except for the fact that a lot of things depend on grabbing data stored in MT::Template::Context objects, and while the documentation tells you how to get at the data (->stash('key')), it fails to list which keys are used in which context.  So, lots of trial and error ensued.  (And I still haven't figured out everything I wanted.)

Moving on, I've spent the time when I haven't been busy during the past week reading.  So, here're brief reviews of the various books I've finished:

• Conan, by Robert E. Howard (with contributions by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter):  Classic pulp-goodness.  The stories range for quite good (most of the Howard ones), to just OK (the de Camp and Carter ones).  Not even close to how bad most people would probably assume a Conan book would be.  Well, once you get past some of the mildly-offputting racial descriptions, that is.  Howard was very much a product of his environment (early 20th century Texas).
• Foundation's Edge, by Isaac Asimov.  The fourth Foundation novel, it's not nearly as good as the original trilogy.  Part of the reason is that it stems from the period when Asimov began linking his two major series, Foundation and the Robots books, together, and (in my opinion), it suffers because of this.  (Well, that and the fact that it just doesn't feel like a Foundation novel.)
• Against the Fall of Night, by Arthur C. Clarke:  Later re-written as The City and the Stars, and also re-released with a sequel by Gregory Benford as Beyond the Fall of Night.  One of Clarke's first novels, it tells the tale of a boy named Alvin, who yearns to escape from what is believed to be the last city on Earth, to which humans were driven in a war against the Invaders.  It's a short, easy read, and probably one of Clarke's best novels.  I only have one major complaint about it:  the ending is far too abrupt.  It's progressing nicely, and as you start getting near the end a character suddenly appears, who then proceeds to produce several chapters of exposition that explains all the questions from early in the novel, and that's it.  While it wasn't as bad an ending as other authors, whom I shan't name, it was a tad disappointing.
• Finally, The Master & Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov.  This novel is just, quite simply, wow.  Written from 1928 up until Bulgakov's death in 1940 (and never completely finished), it's been called one of the masterpieces of Soviet literature.
  To summarise:  the novel has two stories in it.  In the first, which is  inspired by Goethe's Faust, the devil, called Woland, arrives in 1920's Moscow and, along with his companions (Korovyov, a retired choirmaster, the demon Azazello, and Behemoth, a giant, talking black cat), proceeds to wreak havoc on a population that believes in neither God, nor the devil.  The purpose of their visit, though, is to track down Margarita, who is in love with a man known only as the Master—a writer who was publicly ridiculed for daring to write a novel about Pilate.
  The second storyline is the Master's novel, which tells the story of the crucifixtion from Pilate's view.  (Although, that said, the characters in these sections bare very little resemblence to their Biblical counterparts.)
  In short: the novel is satire.  The Moscow sections are heavily Biblical in influence, while the Jerusalem sections feature events and characters that have strong parallels to Stalinist Russia.  It's an amazing novel, and I have to thank Dmitrii and Sasha for recommending Bulgakov to me.
  The only recommendation I have, for anyone who might want to track down a copy, is to watch what translation you get.  The novel wasn't published until 26 years after Bulgakov's death (1966), and even then it was only available in a censored format until the early 70s.  The first two English translations (by Ginsburg and Glenny, respectively), are based off of the censored Russian version, and should be avoided for this reason.

Finally, a pair of links:

The first one comes courtesy of Shan, and has already been seen by some people.  I won't describe it, as the sheer creepiness and wrongness factor would only be mitigated by doing so.  Don't worry, it's entirely safe for work.  (Click here!)

The second one comes to me via my brother, and deserves viewing if only for the hilarity of the video footage that accompanies it.  Basically, a bunch of scientists took a video camera and chased octopuses around with it.  What they found was that the octopuses will attempt to camouflage themselves, and then will run away using two of their tentacles as legs.  Go have a look, and remember to click on the two links in the article.  The videos are probably the funniest thing I've seen all week.

One final note:  this ad showed up at the side of the above New Scientist article when I visited it.  Strangest ad I've seen in a while…