Eyes Through a Twilight Lens

I'm Feeling a little Twi-lightheaded.

My Winter Break (aka my boys' winter break) was spent reading the entire Twilight series (all four books by Stephanie Meyer) during that two-week period. And now, I'm obsessed. Mentally, these characters are living in my head and I just can't get away.

Now, I am not one to spoil the story for anyone else, so I will try to make any references such that they do not give away the plot.

I read voraciously. Book two was finished in about a day and a half. And then, having to wait longer than that to buy books 3 and 4 was tough for me. I ended up reading Kurt Vonnegut's book, "A Man Without A Country", over a couple of hours, just to pass the time until bedtime.

But now, everywhere I look, I see Twilight. The next book I picked up started in Russia, December 1917. The opening page introduces a woman sitting on a train. She looks to her husband, whose lips are blue and skin is chilled from the cold. The scene is one of danger. I imagine vampires are descending upon them. Or that the man is Edward. And then I think, 1917 - isn't that around the time that Edward became a vampire? Or was he already a vampire at that time? Or at least already alive? It took a while for me to remember that - more relevantly - that's the year that my house was built, and that threw me for a loop too, since I was busy imagining Edward's lifetime. Shake it off. Shake it off.

The other day, I was taking Friday for a walk, and he was bounding around in the snow, happy as can be, and I couldn't help but think of Jacob.

And just now, I read an article about 6 New Web Technologies from Wired magazine (click the title link to read the article). So, while the article reviews important new technology, let me tie them to Twilight:

1. Identity Management: Different sites store different contacts for you, and now there are tools to keep it all together. "You get one virtual ID card that gives you access to hundreds of websites." One existence, hundreds of possibilities: live forever and you can be a doctor, a lawyer, a high school student, a concert pianist...

2. HTML 5: updating the "rules" of the web to make it even better. "HTML 5 will be great step forward". Kinda like vampires, wouldn't you say? Faster, stronger, more powerful than mere humans...

3. Lifestreaming: "Sites like FriendFeed, Plaxo Pulse and Digsby serve as social-network-activity aggregators. They're like virtual funnels." Know what everyone is thinking, all at once - kinda like your own personal Edward... And that's not even mentioning the double meaning of "FriendFeed".

"Oh, and don't expect to be able to add Facebook to your lifestream. The network lets all sorts of data in, but precious little out." - a little like Bella, no?

4. Firefox 3: okay, this one seems to fall along the same lines as HTML 5, in just being Faster, Better, Stronger, but this quote added a little something:

"It's still the second-most-popular browser after Microsoft Internet Explorer by a wide margin, but Firefox 3 is the feisty favorite of the web's elite."

For now, I'd say the Harry Potter books still top the list in terms of overall popularity, but these seem to be a feisty second.

5. Google Chrome: okay, see, now I've got to just keep this going to be complete, but here goes. Chrome is Google's new web browser, with a key new feature that if one tab crashes, only that tab goes down, not the whole browser.

Imagine a family of vampires - say, the Cullens. Now, they are all powerful in their own right, providing all sorts of power. Even when one proves a weak link, the group as a whole does not suffer. They can continue and let the "crashed" vampire recover. (Think Edward after he meets Bella, and Jasper in book 2)

And of course, the article described that as its "killer" feature :).

6. Location Awareness: You know, like being able to send a text message from your cell phone to google (46645) with any query you'd post to google to get directions or a list of nearby restaurants texted back to your phone. Add to that GPS on your phone, buttons on the iPhone to do that automatically, and other technology designed to know where you are at any moment. Makes the mission of a tracker like James even easier, so I don't know that it's necessarily a good thing, but it could also help those vampires that aren't so skilled. In the real world, it could make life easier for those out to get you (and oh how I hope this technology is being mastered by those we trust to protect and serve), but I've long ago come to the realization that I'm neither interesting nor important enough for anyone to be after me, so I don't have to worry about being found.

I have a feeling this twi-lightheadedness is going to last me a while; it took a long time for me to stop associating everything with Harry Potter. But this time around, I think I'm going to spread the joy.