GCast 64:

Noise Reduction with Audacity

Learn how to use Audacity to reduce the background noise in an audio file.

Episode 580

Jason Bock on .NET Core 3

Jason Bock describes the most important new features in .NET Core 3

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre includes the character of Bertha - Rochester's mad wife, whom he keeps locked in the attic.

In Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys tells Bertha's story and her descent into madness.

Her name was Antoinette and she was the Creole daughter of a slave owning family in 19th century Jamaica. The family fell into financial and social ruin when the British Empire outlawed slavery.  The local freed slaves hated them enough that they eventually burned down their home and killed Antoinette's brother. Her mother married a wealthy Englishman, who killed himself, driving her mother to madness. Antoinette was raised by nuns at a convent and eventually an Englishman married her for her inheritance. But the unnamed Englishman (presumably Mr. Rochester) was unloving and believed rumors that he heard about Antoinette and her family. He became distant and unfaithful and even began calling her "Bertha" instead of her real name over Antoinette's objections.

The book humanizes Bertha / Antoinette, who is no longer the monstrous lunatic of Bronte's novel. Her troubled mind is in part due to heredity and in part to her traumatic upbringing and unhappy marriage.  Her marriage to Rochester resulted in the loss of her freedom, which is analogous to the slavery inflicted by her own ancestors. The novel explores conflicts between races and genders and classes and forces the reader to think about the choices we make in life. Although Antoinette looks white, she is part black and not fully accepted by either race. Her marriage to Rochester is, in part, an effort to escape her situation.

Sargasso is probably the most interesting examples of fan fiction I've read. The narration suddenly shifts from Antoinette to Rochester without explanation, which was a bit jarring and confusing. But a quick re-read of the opening pages of Section 2 clarified my perspective.

It isn't necessary to read Jane Eyre before this novel, but it helps one appreciate where the character is going. If you have not yet read Bronte's classic novel, I recommend reading a synopsis before diving into this one. The book does stand on its own; but is better as a prequel and explanation of Bronte's novel.

Episode 579

Laurent Ellerbach on Diversity and Inclusion Workshop

Laurent Ellerbach has developed a workshop to help people think about and talk about Diversity and Inclusion. In this workshop, attendees articulate their ideas visually using Lego bricks.

10/6
Today I am grateful for phone calls yesterday from my sister Debbie and my cousin Kevin.

10/5
Today I am grateful to write some code the past couple weeks for the first time in too long.

10/4
Today I am grateful for a free annual flu shot.

10/3
Today I am grateful for a visit this week from John and Becky.

10/2
Today I am grateful for dinner last night with John and Becky.

10/1
Today I am grateful for a long-overdue haircut last night.

9/30
Today I am grateful to see the Billy Cobham Crosswinds Project featuring Randy Brecker last night at the City Winery.

9/29
Today I am grateful to cook a nice meal for someone yesterday for the first time in a long time.

9/28
Today I am grateful to see Bruce Cockburn in concert last night.

9/27
Today I am grateful for a grocery store 1 block from my home.

9/26
Today I am grateful to see Ad Astra in Lincoln Square last night. And for a 10-mile bike ride home after the movie.

9/25
Today I am grateful for the flexibility to work where I want on many days.

9/24
Today I am grateful for a birthday dinner with Tim and Natale last night at Au Cheval.

9/23
Today I am grateful for my son's new job as head basketball coach at Kalamazoo College.

9/22
Today I am grateful to attend the MSU-Northwestern football game in Evanston yesterday.

9/21
Today I am grateful for a few days in Redmond and Bellevue.

9/20
Today I am grateful:
-to attend a Train the Trainer course for a Diversity and Inclusion workshop yesterday
-for lunch yesterday with my boss's boss's boss (After months of phone conversations, we finally met in person)

9/19
Today I am grateful for my first visit to an Afghan restaurant.

9/18
Today I am grateful for dinner with John last night.

9/17
Today I am grateful for a night in my own bed.

9/16
Today I am grateful for an excellent weekend in London.

9/15
Today I am grateful for:
-a tour of Westminster Abbey
-Lunch with Peter
-my first visit to the British Museum
-seeing "Matilda" live in London's West End

9/14
‪Today I am grateful for:‬
‪-Coffee with Galiya and Gary ‬
‪-Dinner with James and Gosia ‬
‪-Seeing Rachel before she left London ‬

9/13
Today I am grateful to work with customers who are excited about what we are working on together.

9/12
Today I am grateful to work with smart people.

9/11
Today I am grateful for dinner with this team at an English Pub last night.

Sep 11, 2019, 7:29 AM

9/10
Today I am grateful for my first visit to Peterborough, England.

9/9
Today I am grateful for a week in Rome.

9/8
Today I am grateful to visit the Coliseum, the Forum, the Vatican, the Spanish Steps and other attractions in Rome yesterday with Hattan, Anders, and Robert.

9/7
Today I am grateful for a successful OpenHack in Rome this week.

9/6
Today I am grateful my camera was still there when I went back to look for it.

9/5
Today I am grateful for a hot shower following a restless night.

9/4
Today I am grateful for dinner with Hattan last night.

9/3
‪Today I am grateful for my first visit to Rome in over 30 years. ‬

9/2
Today I am grateful for my first visit to the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Clyde Griffiths is an ambitious young man.

At the age of 21, he finds himself working for a rich uncle who owns a shirt company. He is the boss of a department filled with young ladies and, despite company rules expressly forbidding such things, begins an affair with one of them - the beautiful Roberta Alden. He is also welcomed into the social circles of the local aristocracy, where he is liked for his good looks and charm. Soon, he meets rich, beautiful Sondra and decides he loves her instead of Roberta. Unfortunately, he continues to sleep with Roberta; and, when she becomes pregnant, he is left with a dilemma: marry the girl he no longer loves or abandon her for Sondra, risking exposure for his philandering. It is at this point that Clyde contemplates murder.

Clyde sounds like a terrible person. Who would treat people like this and place his own ambitions above the very lives of others? But An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser does not begin with Clyde's entry into high society. It begins with his childhood in Kansas City, where Clyde was the eldest son of street evangelists. Poor and embarrassed, he finds work as a hotel busboy, which puts some money in his pocket. He begins spending his evenings squandering his salary on booze and prostitutes. After being exploited by the selfish gold digger Hortense Briggs, who manipulates him into buying her expensive gifts, he develops a mistrust of women. At one point, Clyde is a passenger in a stolen car that is involved in a fatal hit-and-run. Fearing arrest, Clyde flees Kansas City and changes his name. By doing so, he learns that he can avoid responsibility and punishment by running away.

Each stage of Clydes's life reinforces in him his desire for material wealth and social standing. He becomes more self-centered with each passing year - not evil, but with little empathy toward others.

The book ends with a murder trial, a thorough analysis of one of the book's central tragedies.

There are side stories: the office of the ambitious district attorney that has no qualms about manufacturing evidence; the mother who refuses to acknowledge the possibility that her son might be guilty; the virginal Roberta's agonizing choice to give herself to Clyde or risk losing him; and Sondra, whose parents disapprove of her relationship with a boy they see as lower in social ranking.

But mostly, this is Clyde's story. And the reader cannot help but sympathize with him, even though his problems are almost entirely self-inflicted. Clyde is a product of his experiences. He has been conditioned by society to want what others have, and he doesn't have the courage to question this.

Dreiser removes much ambiguity by telling the reader explicitly what is in the mind of each character as they are speaking. With Clyde, the ambiguity remains because Clyde himself does not understand his own emotions.

There are three deaths in the novel. And, although each is tragic, the real tragedy of the story is the slow descent of Clyde's conscience. He never sees himself as evil, but he falls for the material comforts, and the pretty girls, and he comes to believe that he is entitled to these things and that his desires take precedence over the needs of anyone else.

An American Tragedy is not perfect. It's longer than it needs to be, and it moves slowly at times. But it is a good crime story; a good legal drama; and a very good psychological analysis of a misguided mind growing up under the influence of American values.

Maybe it was the rain. Or the fact that it was a Sunday. Or because they performed 2 shows on  the same day.

But the City Winery was barely half full for the legendary drummer Billy Cobham and his Crosswinds Project, which featured his longtime collaborator trumpeter Randy Brecker.

Cobham and Brecker have a long history together. They co-founded the jazz-rock fusion band Dreams in the late 1960s before launching successful careers as solo artists and collaborating with many of the jazz greats. Brecker found great success pairing with his brother Michael as The Brecker Brothers, while Cobham co-founded the Mahavishnu Orchestra with guitarist John McLaughlin.

Sunday they were together again, along with 4 other musicians (guitar, bass, keyboard, and bassoon) at the City Winery. I caught the second of two shows and the band was tight and energetic.

Named for his classic 1974 album, the Crosswinds Project played the full Spanish Moss Suite from that LP, leading in with a beautifully rendered solo keyboard version of "Savannah the Serene".

It was Cobham's band and he led the way, but each of his band took turns with outstanding solo and ensemble performances. I was particularly impressed with keyboardist Osam Elelwy, who brought both energy and emotion to the evening's performance.

At 75 years young, Billy Cobham is celebrating his legacy and still sharing continuing to pour himself into his music. It will be tough to match the influence he has had on musicians in the past, but he is still inspiring audiences.

Episode 578

Raj Krishnan on Azure Data Explorer

Raj Krishnan describes Azure Data Explorer - a highly-scalable, very fast in-memory data store formerly known as Kusto.

Bruce Cockburn sat outside Maurer Hall at Lincoln Square's Old Town School of Folk Music, smiling, chatting, and signing autographs. His sold-out concert had ended almost an hour before, but he patiently waited for each photo request and each expression of gratitude - gratitude for the evening's music and for four decades of recordings. He did not show his 74 years at all. Until he stood up and one noticed a curve in his back that kept him bent over a bit too much and forced him to use a cane beyond a few steps.

Any age-related frailties were conspicuously absent during his nearly 3-hour performance. He sat while playing and singing, but he left his seat between songs to change instruments (he brought four guitars plus a charango - a small South American stringed instrument). But the thing that mostly defies Cockburn's years is his voice, which remains the rich baritone that made him semi-famous half a lifetime ago.

Cockburn seemed to get stronger as the show progressed. During the first half of his show, he softened up the audience - lulling them into a feeling of comfort; but, after intermission, one could feel the energy increase. From the anger of protest songs like "Call it Democracy" and environmental anthems like "If a Tree Falls" to the uplifting and upbeat "wondering Where the Lions Are" (my favourite Cockburn song), the septuagenarian singer-songwriter kept the energy high.

He was accompanied on stage by a young man that I assume was his son (Bruce introduced him as someone with the same last name), who alternated between guitar and accordion. This helped fill in some of the songs, but one gets the feeling that the elder Cockburn could have carried the show himself.

It was a rare treat to see a legendary performer like Bruce Cockburn, who is still going strong.

Photos

Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust takes place in 1930s Hollywood; but it has little to do with the film industry. This even though the book opens with a parade of movie extras marching past and ends with fans rioting outside a movie premiere.

Most of the story takes place around the edges of movie life. Tod Hackett works as a set painter for a movie studio and Faye Greener is a sometimes extra, waiting for her chance to be a star.

Tod is infatuated with Faye, but Faye cares only for herself and uses Tod, along with every man who comes into his life. Some of the men she teases, some she sleeps with, and some she exploits. She particularly takes advantage of Homer Simpson (Yes. Homer Simpson), a shy, repressed Midwesterner who comes to California hoping the mild weather will heal his failing health. After the death of her father, Faye moves into Homer's house and invites her lover and his friend to move into his garage, where they host illegal cock fights. She is verbally abusive to all her suitors, but she is cruelest to Homer.

The Day of the Locust shines a light on the shallowness of Hollywood culture. As Hackett tells it, people "have come to California to die". The pleasant weather isn't enough to occupy them, and they don't have enough money or imagination to fight the inevitable boredom that overwhelms their lives. So, everyone devolves into a shallow version of themselves.

No one seemed to be working toward anything meaningful. Tod is complex ("a very complicated young man with a whole set of personalities, one inside the other like a nest of Chinese boxes); but everyone he encounters is a simple stereotype from the ill-tempered dwarf to the silent cowboy to the mother pushing her spoiled son to be a child star. It's no wonder that so many of them fall for Faye's empty charms. 

This book is satirical and depressing and filled with sexual frustration, which leads to heartbreak, which often leads to violence.

And I liked it.

Aziraphale is an angel and Crowley is a demon and both have been living on Earth for thousands of years and they have grown to like it. They even like each other. Sort of. So, they are distressed to learn that the antichrist has been born, signaling the impending end of the world.

Anathema Device is the descendent of Agnes Nutter - a 17th century soothsayer whose predictions have all come to pass. Agnes has predicted the coming Armageddon.

Newton Pulsifer and Sergeant Shadwell are incompetent witch hunters, who only know that something strange is going on, so they chase it across England, trying to avoid bad people and any monetary expenditures.

The Chattering Order of St. Beryl are a group of bumbling Satanists charged with swapping the newborn antichrist, so he is raised by a powerful political family. They accidentally place him with the wrong family, so he grows up in a small Oxfordshire village raised by middle class parents.

Years later, the Four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse are racing toward the 11-year-old antichrist, planning to finalize his rise to power. Horseman Pestilence retired after the discovery of penicillin, so he has been replaced by Pollution.

And then it gets weird.

These are some of the elements of Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman - two of my favourite authors.

It's hard to tell which parts are Gaiman and which are Pratchett. Gaiman is better at inventing worlds and making them seem believable. Pratchett is better at laugh-out-loud humour. And there is plenty of both in this story.

Good Omens is a tale about the worth of humanity and about the relative power of nature versus nurture. But mostly it is about silliness and funny jokes. If you love Gaiman and you love Pratchett (and who doesn't?), you will enjoy this book.

When my boys were young, I would regularly read to them and their classmates. One of our favourite authors was Roald Dahl, so I spent many Fridays reading chapters from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Matilda.

Saturday night, I had the chance to experience Matilda - the Musical live at London' Cambridge Theatre.

It was a delightful interpretation of a delightful book.

Matilda is the story of a young girl who loves books, but is despised, discouraged, and verbally abused by her ignorant and amoral parents. When she goes to school, she finds the other children absurdly ignorant, the older kids callous and teasing and - worst of all - the headmistress Miss Trunchbull is cruel and domineering.

Matilda is bright and mischievous and unafraid. But her life is made miserable by the adults who surround her. The one great exception is her kindly teacher Miss Honey, who cares about Matilda, but is too timid to stand up to Miss Trunchbull.

The Cambridge Theatre production made use of the entire theatre. Actors frequently entered and exited the stage up the center aisle (right next to my seat, as it turned out); and the action sometimes extended up into the balcony. In a break from tradition, the intermission ended without warning with Matilda's father stepping onstage to read a statement on the dangers of excessive reading. People hurried back to their seat when they discovered the play had resumed.

The title character was played perfectly by Tilly-Raye Bayer, a tiny girl with the cherubic face and a precocious attitude.

I saw many children in the audience enjoying the show, but many adults like me also had a great time. It took me back to a simpler time that I shared with my boys.

My second experience in London's famous West End theatre district was a delight.

Jack and Babette have an idyllic, if unconventional life. Jack is a professor at a small midwestern college, whose Hitler Studies program has proved enormously popular. The major is so popular that a colleague is building a similar curriculum around Elvis Presley in addition to a course about car crashes in movies. Babette has a successful career reading tabloid stories to blind people.

They live in a nice house near campus with four children from their numerous previous marriages. They are a little too obsessed with death, but what of that?

Things start to disrupt when Jack is exposed to toxic fumes that descend on their town - an incident that brings him closer to the death he fears.

Babette learns of a pill that claims to cure death anxiety, but the only source of this pill will only trade it for sex. She concedes and Jack takes the affair in stride when he first learns of it; but later plots violent revenge.

White Noise by Don DeLillo is a surreal book. From absurd pop-culture college majors to the unexplained "toxic cloud" to unlikely medicines to the children who seem more mature than their parents to the ex-wives with even quirkier personalities than Jack and Babette's family.

DeLillo makes it work, thanks to his gift of humor. His dialogue is often inane, but funny. And he throws the reader off by including unrelated details in many scenes, such as describing the shoes a character wears or relaying what is heard on the TV in the background.

White Noise is an enjoyable satire and a good read.

Until this week, I was unfamiliar with Zora Neale Hurston or her 1937 novel "Their Eyes Were Watching God".

But I read it and I'm glad I did.

This is the story of Janie Crawford - a black woman growing up in Florida in the early 20th century. Janie is the product of a white man raping her mother and her mother is the result of the rape of Janie's grandmother by her plantation master.

It is a full generation following the emancipation of slaves in America, but the poor, uneducated blacks of the region are still far from equal. This book reminds us that they had stories to tell and people to love and lives to lead.

As a young girl, Janie hoped for love. As a teenager, Janie's grandmother arranged her marriage to an older man, hoping to avoid the tragedies of the last two generations. This marriage fails and her second husband dies, and she marries a charming gambler, who is much younger than her. Their life seems good until a flood and a rabid dog attack disrupts it.

But these plot devices are just Hurston's ways of allowing us to see inside Janie and her neighbors. She struggles to love her husbands, even though they sometimes behave irrationally and occasionally violently. She struggles with other blacks, even though some of them have ideas that are strange to her. And she struggles to survive in a world designed by white men.

Her first two husbands treat her as a piece of property. Only her third husband gives her the love she desires. He is far from perfect, but he accepts Janie as a person.

We cannot escape the racial overtones in this novel because most of the characters are black and are living in a white-controlled society. But the book is more about gender roles and the relationship between men and women than about race. Janie searches for love but ends up being controlled by the men in her life. The black men of this story are controlled by the white men; and they take out their frustration by controlling their black women.

Hurston strives to make the dialogue authentic, including poor grammar and phonetic (mis)pronunciations, which can make this book a challenge to read. But this adds to the color of the story. And I happened to choose the audiobook, read by Ruby Dee, who did a masterful job.

"Their Eyes Were Watching God" is a story of strength and endurance by a woman seeking love and affirmation and survival. Janie is human but heroic. She asserts and defends herself while surviving in a world she does not control. Ultimately, she succeeds in living her life by her own rules.

Glenn Tilbrook celebrated his birthday with us in Chicago.

Tilford - along with Chris Difford - are the driving force behind the band Squeeze. Squeeze began as a New Wave band in the late 1970s, but progressed to become one of the most creative bands of the early 1980s - producing some very inventive melodies, rhythms, and arrangements. Difford and Tilbrook were the founders, songwriters, and leaders of the band and they are the only two original members to remain with the group today.

Saturday night at the Chicago Theatre, they were joined by a very good backing ensemble, especially a drummer, filled with kinetic energy and a masterful keyboard player.

From the moment they walked on stage, they were focused on the music. The band played four songs before they paused to greet the audience.

Mixed in with some lesser-known album cuts, the band played many of their hits, including "Annie Get Your Gun", "Cool for Cats" (a rare Difford vocal), "Goodbye Girl", and "Up the Junction". Highlights of the evening included an acoustic version of "Tempted" and a rousing version of "Black Coffee in Bed" to close the night.

The seats at the Chicago Theatre were a little too close to allow any pogo dancing; but the audience got on their feet when they recognized a song.

During their heyday, Squeeze was moderately popular on American radio stations, while they enjoyed much greater success in their native UK and on my college dorm room stereo.

At the end of the show, Difford wished his friend a Happy Birthday, showed a video from back home, and led the crowd in singing "Happy Birthday".

We all celebrated.

Episode 577

Lorena Mesa on the Python Software Foundation

Lorena Mesa is a GitHub data engineer and a Director of the Python Software Foundation.

She describes the mission of the Foundation and how they assist Python developers and the Python community.

Links:

http://lorenamesa.com/
https://twitter.com/loooorenanicole
https://www.python.org/psf-landing/
https://www.python.org/psf/
https://github.com/psf/
https://pycon.org/

9/1
Today I am grateful to attend the Squeeze concert last night with John.

8/31
Today I am grateful for a visit yesterday to the September 11 Memorial and Museum in lower Manhattan.

8/30
Today I am grateful for:
-My first visit to Birdland Jazz Club
-Seeing "The Phantom of the Opera" on Broadway

8/29
Today, I am grateful for my first visit to Purchase, NY.

8/28
Today I am grateful for my first visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday.

8/27
Today I am grateful that I've had a few weeks without work travel.

8/26
Today I am grateful to attend Mass at Assumption Church for the first time.

8/25
Today I am grateful for a bike ride along the lakefront in Milwaukee yesterday.

8/24
‪Today I am grateful to see Max Weinberg’s Jukebox in concert last night. ‬

8/23
Today I am grateful for dinner with John last night.

8/22
Today I am grateful for a tour of the Glessner House Museum yesterday.

8/21
Today I am grateful for a hot bath last night.

8/20
Today I am grateful for a weekend in Flagstaff with Dan.

8/19
Today I am grateful for a visit to Walnut Canyon National Monument, Grand Falls, and Winslow yesterday.

8/18
Today, I am grateful for a drive through the deserts, canyons, mountains, and plateaus of central Arizona.

8/17
Today I am grateful to attend an extra-innings Giants-Diamondbacks baseball game last night at Chase Field.

8/16
Today I am grateful for:
-the Dell technician who fixed my motherboard yesterday;
-a chance to speak at the Chicago .NET User Group last night

8/15
Today I am grateful for my longest bike ride of the year (so far)

8/14
Today I am grateful that so many electronics can be fixed by turning them off and on.

8/13
Today I am grateful that downtown Chicago becomes more bike-friendly every year.

8/12
Today I am grateful to visit the United States Pizza Museum yesterday.

8/11
Today I am grateful to see Sam Shepard's "True West" last night on my first visit to the Steppenwolf Theatre.

8/10
Today I am grateful for my new dresser.

8/9
Today I am grateful for a few days in southwest Michigan.

8/8
Today I am grateful for a walk around Saugatuck yesterday.

8/7
‪Today I am grateful to watch the sun set over Lake Michigan last night. ‬

8/6
Today I am grateful for dinner last night with Emilija and Larissa.

8/5
Today I am grateful to see Santana and the Doobie Brothers in concert last night.

William Faulkner's Light in August opens as Lena Grove arrives in Jefferson, Mississippi after traveling hundreds of miles to Jefferson, Mississippi in search of Lucas Birch - the father of her unborn child. Lucas left Alabama, promising to send for Lena as soon as he was settled, but she never heard from him.

Lena learns that Lucas has been living in Jefferson for months under an assumed name. He has been bootlegging with a drifter named Joe Christmas.

Christmas was raised in an orphanage, then adopted by an abusive stepfather, whom he murdered. He has been on the run ever since. At the beginning of the novel, he is having a relationship with Joanna Burden - a local descendent of abolitionists, who is shunned by the whites in town because of her tolerance and kindness toward the blacks.

Each major character we meet is a misfit: an unwed mother or a defrocked preacher or a criminal or an abolitionist or an orphan. Many of them are self-destructive and all of them are interesting. When Faulkner introduces each character, he takes the time to review their backstory - explaining how they came to their troubles.

Soon, there is a murder and a manhunt and a town seeking justice for someone they never liked.

Race plays a huge role in this novel. One character looks white but is filled with self-loathing because he believes he is part black. The local white folks are quick to believe the guilt of an alleged murderer when they learn he may be part negro.

One thing the racism of the characters succeeds in doing is masking the extreme misogyny of many of the characters.

Sometimes the frequent time hops make this a difficult story to follow; but, stay with it. It is filled with tragedy and human drama and raw emotion.

GCast 63:

In this video, I walk you through a JavaSript application that calls the Sentiment Analysis Cognitive Service.

Episode 576

Dan Rey on Microsoft Surface

Dan Rey describes the different versions of Microsoft Surface and how you can use them to be more productive.

• Blog
• Videos: Tips and Tricks

White Teeth by Zadie Smith follows the lives of old friends Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. They met when serving together in a tank in World War II, where they got lost, missed the end of the war, and sentenced a war criminal to death; they remained friends; married much younger women; had children; worked menial jobs in north London; and spend their free time in a filthy pub drinking beer and eating greasy food.

But they are very different. Archie is English and simple and easygoing; Samal is a fiery and opinionated Bangladeshi immigrant, who wants his family to maintain the traditions of his homeland.

Samal is so troubled by the English influence on his family that he sends his son Magid back to Bangladesh so he can learn his ancestral ways.

The plot becomes more complex as Smith introduces more characters and tells their backstories and their lives become more and more intertwined. In addition to Archie and Samad, she gives us:

Clara: Archie's young Jamaican wife, who is trying to escape the influence of her Jehovah's Witness mother.

Alsana: Samad's wife. She never forgives Samad for sending away their son.

Millat and Magid: Twin sons of Samad and Alsana. They grow up with very different personalities. After Magid is sent to Bangladesh, Millat turns to a life of pot-smoking and womanizing for a few years, before embracing Islam. Magid rejects religion and embraces intellectualism.

Irie: Archie and Clara's daughter. She is intelligent but lacks self-esteem and has a hopeless crush on Millat.

The Chalfens, an intellectual, liberal, well-meaning, dysfunctional family, who try (sometimes successfully) to mentor the Jones and Iqbal children.

There are other characters, and each has their backstory and their quirks, but the narrative revolves largely around the characters listed above. The book often jumps around in time to reveal the backstories of each character. But it does so succinctly and successfully. In the end, all the characters end up in the same room with different goals and an unexpected result.

Smith explores several conflicts including the struggle between immigrant assimilation and tradition to the role of race in society; the difficulty of parents and children to understand and relate to one another; and the meaning of religion in individual lives. She does so with a good story and with a witty prose, as in the following:

"Oh he loves her; just as the English loved India and Africa and Ireland; it is the love that is the problem, people treat their lovers badly."

I enjoyed the characters and I enjoyed the story.

White Teeth is one of the best novels I've read this year.

A jukebox (for those too young to remember) was a machine filled with black vinyl discs - each containing a different song. They could be found in a lot of bars and diners and patrons could insert one or more coins and select the songs they wanted to hear.

Max Weinberg's Jukebox works on the same principle. A screen next to the stage continuously scrolled a list of almost 200 songs and Max periodically went into the audience to ask what people wanted to hear. And then he and his band played those requests.

Weinberg (for those too young to remember) rose to fame as the drummer of Bruce Springsteen's legendary E Street Band; and later led Conan O'Brien's house band for both the Late Show and the Tonight Show.

Max Weinberg opened his City Winery show Friday evening with Cream's "White Room" and Tom Petty's "American Girl" before soliciting requests from the audience. Anything on the scrolling list was fair game and the list was packed with classic rock favourites from The Beatles, The Who, The Stones, Springsteen (of course), and a host of others. Max played the drums and was accompanied by 2 guitarists and a bass player - each of which took turns singing lead.

In 2+ hours, I counted 26 songs performed by the band, including "Lola", "Drift Away", and "Me and Julio" - each delivered with tight playing, high-quality musicianship and great enthusiasm.

It was like listening to a really good bar cover band with one famous guy in it.

They closed the night with a trio of high-energy Springsteen songs: "Pink Cadillac", "Dancing in the Dark", and "Glory Days". For the final song, Max invited audience members to join the band onstage.

A great concert (for those too young to remember) happens when both the audience and the performers enjoy themselves. This was one of those evenings.

More photos

Recently, I was working on a VM that someone else provided me and I needed to download an executable from the Internet onto this VM. I discovered that the only installed browser on the VM was Internet Explorer 11 and that the browser was configured to prevent anyone from downloading files from the Internet.

I don't know if this is the default setting for IE 11, but here is how to change the setting to allow users to download files.

Open Internet Explorer.

From the menu, select Tools | Internet Options

The "Internet Options" dialog displays. Select the "Security" tab, as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

Click the [Custom Level] button. The "Security Settings" dialog displays. Scroll down to the "Downloads/File download" section, as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

Select the "Enable" radio button and click the [OK] button. If prompted for confirmation, click [Yes].

Click the [OK] button to close the "Internet Options" dialog.

Now you can download files linked within the browser.

GCast 62:

This video explains the Sentiment Analysis service, which is part of the Text Analytics Cognitive Service.

A data warehouse ("DW") is an ideal tool for collecting and associated disparate data.

A data warehouse has been a part of Microsoft SQL Server for decades, so it's not surprising that it is also included in Microsoft Azure.

To create a SQL Data Warehouse in Azure, navigate to the Azure Portal, sign in, and click the [Create a resource] button (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

From the menu, select Databases | SQL Data Warehouse, as shown in Fig. 2

Fig. 2

The "SQL Data Warehouse" dialog displays, allowing you to enter information about your new data warehouse, as shown in Fig. 3

Fig. 3

At the "Subscription" field, select the subscription in which you wish to create this data warehouse. Most of you will have only one subscription.

At the "Resource group" field, select an existing resource group or click the "Create new" link to create a new resource group in which to add this data warehouse. A resource group is an organizational unit to keep together related Azure resources.

At the "Data warehouse name" field, enter a unique name for your warehouse.

The "Server" field lists all SQL servers in the selected subscription. Every data warehouse is stored in one SQL Server. Select the SQL Server for this DW or click the "Create new" link to create a new SQL Server.

Clicking "Create new" displays the "New server" blade, as shown in Fig. 4. In this blade, you can enter the server name, location, and admin login credentials for a new server.

Fig. 4

Click the [Review + create] button to display the "Review + create" tab of the "SQL Data Warehouse" dialog, as shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5

Click the [Create] button to create a new SQL Data Warehouse. This process may take a few minutes (longer if you also chose to create a new server).

After the Data Warehouse creation is complete, you can navigate to its management page. The "Overview" blade is shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6

In this article, you learned how to create a new Azure SQL Data Warehouse.

Poor Moses Herzog.

His wife convinced him to buy a house in Chicago; then tried to have him committed; then, left him for his best friend. On top of that, he is denied contact with either of his children.

Moses sets out for Chicago with his later father's antique pistol, 2 bullets, and murder on his mind. But nothing goes right, and his plans fall apart, and he is in an automobile accident and the police discover his loaded pistols.

The action does of Saul Bellow's Herzog does not happen until the novel is at least half over. But the author keeps us engaged through Moses's angst, as his life falls apart. Moses deals with his depression by writing letters - most of which are never sent and many of which are addressed to famous people such as Friedrich Nietzsche and (then-President) Dwight Eisenhower.

Herzog is unstable; but he is not crazy as his shrewish wife asserts. And his letter-writing decreases as he comes to terms with the cards he is dealt.

Bellow's writing is poignant and sad, but sometimes humorous, with lines such as

"Lead me into Penn Station"
and
"Will never understand what women want. What do they want? They eat green salad and drink human blood."

This book will appeal to anyone who has experienced the helplessness of a mid-life crisis; or the pain of betrayal; or the paralysis of uncertainty.

Death is very different in the universe of Philip K. Dick's Ubik. Rather than simply ending life or transitioning to an afterlife, the recently dead remain cognizant. If properly preserved, technology exists that allows the living to communicate with the dead - sometimes for years. The consciousness slowly decays over time, after which the deceased finally cease to exist or are reborn anew.

Psychics are common enough in this universe to keep Glen Runciter busy. His company specializes in protecting people from psychic intrusion.

A group of powerful anti-psychics, led by Runciter, travel to the moon to meet with a potential client, where they are attacked and seemingly hurled back in time to the year 1939. But not everything is like the 1939 of their own past and they wonder exactly where they are.

Runciter is a good man and so is his employee Joe Chip. Chip is the perfect hero. He is loyal to his employer and dedicated to finding the truth; but he is financially irresponsible and always lacking funds (a problem when every appliance, device, and door requires a cash fee before it will operate).

Ubik is an imaginative tale of action and drama and speculative science fiction. Dick does an excellent job of taking far-fetched ideas and making them seem plausible. In under 250 pages he builds an entire world; then, destroys that world and creates another.

The story is both dark and humorous.

This novel influenced science fiction for many years after its 1969 publication. Douglas Adams must have read about the annoying talking doors when he wrote them into his Hitchhiker series. At times, we see nested realities, in a way that echoed in the 2010 film "Inception".

The narrative keeps changing our expectations. He keeps us guessing about reality versus illusion and life versus death and past versus present. And that's just the way Philip K. Dick wants it.

In the last article, I walked through the syntax of calling the Bing Spell Check service.

In this article, I will walk through a simple JavaScript application that calls this service.

If you want to follow along this sample is part of my Cognitive Services demos, which you can find on GitHub at https://github.com/DavidGiard/CognitiveSvcsDemos 

This project is found in the "SpellCheckDemo" folder.

Here is the main web page:

Listing 1:

    
    
    
    
     rel="stylesheet" href="css/site.css">

 
     
Spell Check Demo
     

          id="TextToCheck">Life ig buuutiful all the tyme
         
     
     id="SpellCheckButton">Check Spelling!
      id="NewTextDiv">