Fred Curtis

What I've Been Reading Lately

• May 2008 - Julian Burnside, Watching Brief : Reflections on Human Rights, Law and Justice
• May 2008 - Alan H. Cromer, Connected Knowledge : Science, Philosophy, and Education
• May 2008 - Sudhir Venkatesh, Gang Leader for a Day
• Mar 2008 - Victor Borge, My Favorite Intermissions in Music
• Apr 2008 - Alexander McCall Smith, The Miracle at Speed Motors [quotes]
• Apr 2008 - Leonard Mlodinow, Euclid's Window - The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace
• Mar 2008 - Victor Borge, My Favorite Comedies in Music
• Mar 2008 - Tom Holt, Faust Among Equals [quotes]
• Mar 2008 - Tom Holt, You don't Have to be Evil to Work Here, But it Helps [quotes]
• Feb 2008 - Tom Holt, Earth, Air, Fire and Custard [quotes]
• Feb 2008 - Tom Holt, In Your Dreams [quotes]
• Feb 2008 - Tom Holt, The Portable Door [quotes]
• Jan 2008 - Umberto Eco, Mouse or Rat? : Translation as Negotiation
• Jan 2008 - Patrick Hughes & George Brecht, Vicious circles and infinity : a panoply of paradoxes
• Jan 2008 - Stanislaw M. Ulam, Adventures of a Mathematician [quotes]
• Jan 2008 - Alan H. Cromer, Uncommon Sense: the heretical nature of science
• Jan 2008 - Paul R. Halmos, Selecta -- Expository Writing
• Jan 2008 - Norman E. Steenrod, Paul R. Halmos, et al., How to Write Mathematics [quotes]
• Jan 2008 - Travis Taylor, The Quantum Connection
• Jan 2008 - Travis Taylor, Warp Speed
• Dec 2007 - C. Northcote Parkinson, Parkinson's law, or, The pursuit of progress
• Dec 2007 - Eric Abrahamson & David H. Freedman, A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder [quotes]
• Dec 2007 - Randall Garrett, Unwise Child [quotes]
• Dec 2007 - Terry Pratchett, Making Money [quotes]
• Nov 2007 - Karl Kruszelnicki, Dr. Karl's collection of great Australian facts & firsts [quotes]
• Nov 2007 - Sheila E Anderson, The quotable musician : from Bach to Tupac [quotes]
• Nov 2007 - Alexander McCall Smith, The Careful Use of Compliments [quotes]
• Nov 2007 - Hugh Lunn, Lost for Words
• Nov 2007 - Clifford D Simak, Out of Their Minds
• Nov 2007 - Doris Piserchia, Spaceling
  Impressions: One of her earlier and (for me) more appealing novels. Good story, likeable protagonist.
• Oct 2007 - Doris Piserchia, Doomtime
  Impressions: Very imaginative. The protagonist and his philosophical connundrums remind me of A Billion Days of Earth, another novel by Piserchia.
• Oct 2007 - Doris Piserchia, The Deadly Sky
  Impressions: Odd, mildly annoying characters, but imaginative.
  Favourite & most Bulwer-Lyttonish paragraph:

  Above me the mountain waited as it has since the day I was born, and perhaps long before that, a huge and patient escarpment full of mystery. There was about it more than one enigma. Always I ascended it but, more significantly, sooner or later I always descended it.

• Oct 2007 - D. E. Elis, A Thousand Ages
• Oct 2007 - Peter F. Hamilton, Judas Unchained
• Oct 2007 - Peter F. Hamilton, Pandora's Star
• Sep 2007 - Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon [quotes]
• Aug 2007 - Duncan McGeary, Ice Towers (sequel to Snowcastles)
• Aug 2007 - Joseph Mazue, Euclid in the Rainforest
• Aug 2007 - Darrell T. Langart [Pseudonym of Randall T. Garrett], Anything You Can Do ...
• Jul 2007 - Greg Bear, The Serpent Mage
• Jul 2007 - Greg Bear, The Infinity Concerto
• Jul 2007 - Doris Piserchia, The Spinner
  Impressions: The monster attacking the city is more believable and attractive than many of the human protagonists.
• Jul 2007 - Alexander McCall Smith, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive [quotes]
• Jul 2007 - Karla Jennings, The Devouring Fungus: Tales of the Computer Age
• Jul 2007 - Nury Vittachi, The Amazing Life of Dead Eric [quotes]
• Jul 2007 - Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron, The Gandalara Cycle (7) - The River Wall
• Jul 2007 - Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron, The Gandalara Cycle (6) - Return to Eddarta
• Jul 2007 - Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron, The Gandalara Cycle (5) - The Search for Kä
• Jul 2007 - Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron, The Gandalara Cycle (4) - The Well of Darkness
• Jun 2007 - Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron, The Gandalara Cycle (3) - The Bronze of Eddarta
• Jun 2007 - Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron, The Gandalara Cycle (2) - The Glass of Dyskornis
• Jun 2007 - Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron, The Gandalara Cycle (1) - The Steel of Raithskar
• Jun 2007 - Doris Piserchia, The Fluger.
  Impressions: Not a bad story, but ends abruptly. To paraphrase: "... and then the monster died. The end."
• Jun 2007 - Doris Piserchia, A Billion Days of Earth.
  Impressions: The monster carries out philosophical discussions, convincing its victims to surrender to absorbtion.
• Jun 2007 - Eat the Rich
• Jun 2007 - Ross Gittons, Gittinomics
• Jun 2007 - Duncan McGeary, Snowcastles

• Earlier reading ...

What I've Been Writing Lately

• Graph Theory / Combinatorics : Planar maps in 4 bits/edge [April 2001, revised December 2001]

Exciting events in Fred's life

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• Playing the computer game 'nethack' on a character-based terminal and sensing a room full of monsters which looked like:

Other Freds on the web

• The Fred Society
• Fred Nachbaur and his remarkable Dogzilla valve amplifier
• The Happy Fred and Christmas Fred home pages
• Functional Response Emulation Devices
• Mi-Go Named Fred from the Cosma Shalizi's Cthulhu songbook
• Fred, the Boy Everyone Hated from the Cult of the Dead Cow
• Fred: The SGML Grammar Builder
• The late Frederico the Goat
• Fred Curtis, Master Sculptor
• Defunct link: The Game of Fred, written in Java
  http://www.cs.usc.edu/Fred/