Ups and Downs

I feel like I've used that title before. Maybe because it's incredibly jejune.

Anyway, I am having a very busy week, but I felt that updating was the right move, as it's been, only two days in, a week full of ups and downs (fortunately, almost all my direct and personal experiences have been ups); I have about ten minutes, so pardon as this becomes a bulleted list full of link salad.

• Personal Up: This week is my last week at my current job. I'll be moving to a new position a little closer to home, more money, smaller company, etc. etc. It's a weird feeling to be on my last week somewhere—the last time this happened, the store was closing, so we were all on our last legs. My mood is one of completion and celebration, but also a little bit of loss—loss of the people and the familiarity and those all-important rituals—but I still have to jump through the usual hoops. It's like a really lame Irish wake.


• Book World Down: Amazon's little war with MacMillan. I am less than impressed with Amazon's behavior on this front. While books may get marked up a lot, books get marked up for a reason, and you are, as John Scalzi said it, "unload[ing] a shotgun into a crowd of writers" when you pull this kind of action against a publisher. According to the New York Times, Amazon has relented; but according to John Scalzi, some books from MacMillan imprints are still not available on Amazon, so I suspect either Amazon is badly managed or they are trying to stab at their foes even as they fall. Mr. Scalzi's thoughts on how to deal with this are all at once obvious and brilliant; if you want to help an author catch a break, listen to him.


• Speaking of corporate entities I am less than pleased with at the moment, a personal corporate Down: Google. Google has decided, as of today, to discontinue the FTP service that allows me to broadcast this blog here on my website, for good business reasons that nonetheless make my life complicated. The workaround they are offering is not as robust nor is it truly a replacement; as such, I think it's time I look into WordPress, so stay tuned for a possible format shift. You'll be kept updated, I assure you.


• Creative Up (no pun intended): Up has been nominated for both Best Picture and Best Animated Picture. This is stupendous news; Up well-and-truly does deserve the Best Picture, and just being nominated goes a long way toward pulling animation out of its current ghetto of separation. I dream of the day that variations on a medium will all be judged equally (animation vs. live-action film, sequential art vs. novels, my favorite topic of genre fiction vs. fiction), and we just came a tiny step closer. My only worry is that splitting its nomination between two categories could also split its votes, but, a man can still dream.


• And finally, here at the bottom, a Political Up (liberal politics to follow, you have been warned): My country is getting the wheels moving on repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". I think that letting anyone who is fit to serve do so is the right decision in all matters, and seeing things start to shift pleases me. I recognize it will take time (unlike a lot of America, it seems), but I'm glad that the government is starting the move.

That's all the news that's fit to type on my lunch break; now, please pardon me as I go lift weights and eat hummus. It's an exciting life I lead.

More from TED

This one goes out to my little sphere of people who always hear from me on Yahoo and Gmail; did you know we were hacking society?

Your Daily Genius

As a nerd and a budding transhumanist, I always find the stuff on TED fascinating to watch. These people are talking about the future, sometimes in very immediate ways, and watching these guys I can't help but feel a little better about the world when I close the browser.

Today, we have Rachel Armstrong, who would like us to know that she may have found a new way to design buildings. It's an interesting idea in and of itself...but just wait 'til you get to the part about Venice.



And if that wasn't enough, or if you're looking for something in the realm of arts and sciences, might I recommend an artist drawing cities from memory?

On the Subject of Dice

So it's no secret, really: I'm a gamer on top of everything else. For those not wholly in the know, this means I play that Dungeons & Dragons thing that (supposedly) got those (deeply troubled) kids lost in those steam tunnels. No I'm not a Satanist. But I do pretend to be part devil once a month or so. It's cooler than it sounds.

In case you felt there weren't enough places to try to keep track of me on the Intertubes: I now have a page on the Wizards of the Coast Community. They are, again for the uninitiated, the current publishers of Dungeons & Dragons (created by the late great Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and bought from them late in their lives), and the purveyors of the game's fourth edition, of which I am an unapologetic fan.

I doubt I'll upkeep that blog any better than I'll upkeep LiveJournal, but hey, it's a place to put my gaming thoughts that are a little too technical and subcultural to fit quite right here on the Notes. And maybe you want to join too. Considered the site pimped.

The Truth about Twitter

I want to make this post longer, because I treasure your hits and have goals for this site. But Paul Constant already made my point for me.

"Paul Constant Reviews Twitter" is an insightful, incisive, and cleverly-written look at Twitter's impact on the Internet and communication.

I'm not sure Twitter will fade away as Constant expects (except in a broad sense), but otherwise I agree with him: Twitter's changed things.

It's challenged writers; it's opened avenues; it's paved the road for a whole new way of doing business and living life, despite its misuse.

Even this post wouldn't be in the format it takes if it weren't for Twitter suggesting 140 characters can be used to convey important ideas.

So I salute Twitter for this noisy but bloodless revolution; and Paul Constant and @amandapalmer for writing it and linking it respectively.

(And yes, every single paragraph is 140 characters long; Constant did it first and I had to see if I could follow his lead. Thank you sir.)

Now tell me: You followed that, didn't you? So how bad can Twitter be? Give it a try; for proof of concept read the #iranelection hashtag.

For now, I have kielbasa to be cooked, laundry to be done, and writing to be wrote. If you want a Twitter primer, DM me. It's worth a try.

Yes.

Re-shared from my Twitter feed, because the link is that valuable and that awesome. Originally shown to me by Laura Houser, and printed in the digital pages of Salon: the truth about journalism.

Tennis's advice could apply to any writer, though, and it's exactly what I needed to hear: that he's right, and that the world is kicking our asses because we need to be toughened up before we're really ready to do this job. So I'll have to say, fuck the small stuff; and also carefully consider his advice about being drunk.

A Little Advice

I noted this in Google Reader, but this advice for writers stuck in a narrative corner was too good to not give a little extra exposure. The advice may seem obvious in places, but it is sincere and accurate; and trust me, when you're really stuck on something, walking away and letting it sit is one of the hardest things to do.

Why Music Matters

Amanda Palmer* found an essay by Karl Paulnack that is a perfect example of the essay form: something that put beautiful words to a concept I've been trying forever to explain.

Though Paulnack's examples apply only to music, his point applies to all art: to paintings, to photography, to novels and dancing, to story and form of all kinds. These are a part of our spiritual lifeblood, and anyone who would deprive us of them is a criminal.

If you have art in your soul, do it; if you have to work at 7-11 to pay the rent while you create that art, do it. Follow your dream, however banal or deranged others might think it. We need you.

More from the Land of What

Ecofont: the font that uses less ink thanks to imperceptible holes in the letters.

No, really.

Willy Wonka is alive, and he's working as a typographer.

And of course, because I can't help myself:

Two links from outside my RSS feeds:

• World's best Halloween costume, courtesy of modern technology, and...


• Ron Jeremy's picture on first goat.se. (Please don't make me explain it.)

Link Sorbet

So, I have been drunk on link salads lately, and I'm not sure that's the most interesting thing to be tossing out here. So, here's a deal I'll make you.

Here, you will find my Google Reader shared items. This includes a great many of the things I put in link salad posts, and a few others besides; this allows you to easily skip those posts, and eliminates redundancies for those who also have me listed as a friend on Google Reader.

But because I am inconstant, I will give you link salad for a small number of reasons: Personal and publishing news that will not make it onto my RSS feeds; items I have longer commentary about than I can reasonably put in a Reader note; and sites I feel deserve a special mention beyond just sharing them in the admittedly manic and vertiginous world of sharing RSS feeds.

However, I will still not besiege you with Twitter.

I'd be mad if I didn't repost this.

Further clarion calls of our doom--a musical version of The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Here there be melodic spoilers. Video by George Taylor, lyrics by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. (I will happily add a link for Mr. Taylor if and when I find one--it's not precisely the most peculiar name and I haven't the time right now to sift through a Google search.)

Friday's Link Salad

• Aerogel. This stuff is both incredibly absorbent and adsorbent; scientists are currently testing to see if it will be an economical way to soak up oil spills.


• New methods of tracking the origin and cleanliness of foods. These new technologies include, check it out, edible identification tags microscopically etched with lasers. This must be the future, because I can say that without having to immediately add "wouldn't that be awesome?!"


• In the "Real Life as Written by Tim Powers" category, we have this: Geronimo's heirs are suing Skull & Bones because they stole his skull and have it on display. I hear the scritch-scritching of a dozen new novels...

Some link salad, because I care.

• Presenting the newest American hobby sensation: Cornhole. Yeah, I'm twelve.


• Kindle 2's functionality predicted by H.G. Wells, Robert Heinlein, Stanislaw Lem, and Philip K. Dick. In case, you know, you didn't realize that these guys were geniuses.


• Salon.com's Gary Kamiya, on the death of the news. The irony of an Op-Ed piece complaining about the decline in impartial journalism is not lost on me, but Kamiya makes some interesting--if occasionally obvious or inflammatory--points about the new style of data processing taking over the world. Almost makes me want to buy a New York Times subscription...


• The McNuggetini. I have seen the End Times...


• The world's smallest writing. And what does it say? "S.U.", for "Stanford University". Well, at least we didn't get vain or anything...

More link salad

I swear, a movie review or something else with teeth is coming soon; it's just that it's the day before Valentine's Day, and I have spent the last couple of days trying to work my normal job, write, and pound a weapons-grade cold into submission. But for today, we have a list of revolutions:

• Brazilian tecnobrega. I haven't heard any of the music yet, though I plan to go searching for it just to see if I can understand what the article is trying to describe. What fascinates me is the DIY production and distribution, and the idea of using CDs as advertising rather than as a revenue source. I can't decide if I prefer their methods or not, but given how much I babble about creator-owned content and alternative methods of distribution I'd be remiss in my duties if I didn't post this.


• Anarcho-speed-dating. That's an actual quote from the article, and it's a fairly apt description. I can't possibly do this one justice.


• Yes, you really can get dating advice from a nine-year-old boy. The jokes write themselves, I think. And most of them aren't very funny.


• Let's take that cuteness above, and introduce its more horrifying brother, shall we? 13-year-old becomes father? I am praying the Sun got their facts wrong.


• IBM has filed a patent for a "bionic body armor" that will electrocute the wearer into forcibly dodging bullets. I hear the crying of the beta-testers...


• And to end on a high note (if you're a nerd like me): Escape from City 17, a series of short films set in the Half-Life universe. Actually quite well done, I'd have to get serious pedantic to tell which parts were footage from the games and which were their own CGI work. I have not yet found a link to the rest of the series, but it'll get posted as soon as I have it.

To give this link salad an up note...

Rat Park. A story that might just help inspire a new outlook on the world of the addict. I actually found it quite touching, which is not something I usually say about pieces that involve the word "morphine".

Witty Post Title You Probably Don't Get

Link salad, get it while it's fresh.

• India considers banning Google Earth. The story itself is an uncomfortable truth about these kinds of technologies, and while I like to focus on the reaffirming quote on the nature of this double-edged sword, mostly this is here because not sharing it felt too much like me manipulating the reader experience.


• And in ironically timed news, Google debuts a new app that will let smartphone users show others where they are. Speaking of double-edged...


• Spinal Tap to record new material. Elation. I think that's what I feel. I can't help but love niche humor.


• Snarkmarket is pitching curricula for a "new liberal arts". I'm not sure if I find this interesting because it's an indicator of a cultural reformation, or interesting because it smells a little like pretension and presumption. I will, in the end, probably be buying the book.

More from the Internets

Good morning, Tubeites. Time for some links.

• A new Nightmare on Elm Street, featuring a new Freddy Krueger. The creative team behind this one is apparently well-known for its "reboot films". What sound does an empty well make?


• The government decides to shrink the U.S. Postal Service. This all at once makes me both happy and sad; this seems like part of an inevitable move toward a paper-light world, and a herald of some shifts that I can't help but consider unfortunate. It's not as though the U.S. government has a history of handling technological shifts well...


• Comcast interrupts Super Bowl with porn. This is comedy that writes itself...


• Road sign warns of zombies. Viral marketing. Hur hur hur.

There is a man named Warren Ellis. Warren Ellis plays at being a psychotic drunken lowlife who happens to have a gift for prose. You probably know how this joke ends.

This man writes a great many things. Among them is a free thing, entitled FreakAngels, which will be getting a starring role in the Fictions and Curiosities menu perched to the right of this post. I will not trouble you by linking to everything about FreakAngels that is excellent, but I will say that when it comes to reasons for writing, Warren Ellis has got it in one.

Mr. Ellis is absolutely on the money with that one. I am envious.

More thoughts about Mr. Ellis and his tenuous connections to one Art Spiegelman to follow soon. After the post I claimed at the end of last year would be "next".

More microblogging on the Final Rockroll

Rick Astley is here to save America.

Another Link Vegetable.

For all that it's an inventive genre (though prone to abuse), too much steampunk can be bad for your health.

With thanks to Warren Ellis and apologies to those who already read him, too. If you don't, I recommend him; if you don't mind seeing people flay off their own eyebrows, he's probably funnier.

Short But Bittersweet

I'm sorry for a short and pith-free post. I'm sorry for being one of Those Bloggers who pulls this kind of routine on you. I'm sorry for being a little sick.

But when I looking at this TV Tropes page for a show called "Suicide Club" and see that the ad banner says, in huge bold words, "Become Popular", I cannot help but kick my feet and cackle like a glue-riddled madman.

Oh, Internet. You have made degenerates of us all.

A Single Slice of Internet Vegetation

This is a bit like a radish, I think: small, and if improperly prepared, apt to cause looks of disgust.

Fetal Twittering.

I realize that we here in my ego are apt to babble on endlessly about that thing we refuse to call Web 3.0, and the Internet feeding back into the world, and all the ways in which technology can help to create global community and global culture; but this is not a step forward for any society I want to be a part of. I can't imagine this will be anything but asinine, especially since the prototype currently puts quite a leash on the pregnant mother. We could have spent this money curing cancer, people. Or at least finding something more useful to do with Twitter.

This Week's Salad

• Follow-up item: China unblocks the New York Times. Well, I suppose that's a small step in the right direction...


• The Far Side Reenactment Pool. The sincerest, and perhaps strangest, form of flattery.


• Obama's science advisors include an open access supporter, which I guess is sort of a follow-up to the POSTNotes link I provided last week. This is not the first nomination that has gone to someone with strong beliefs about online community and freedom of information, and I'm excited to see where this all goes.

Serious post to follow in a few days' time.

I am your meta-MetaFilter. Call me "Filter Omega".

As usual, life and circumstance puts the lie to my posting claims. The post about obsession and Oliver Postgate (well, his work, that is) is to come later today; for now, you receive more link salad.

• Music industry shifting its anti-piracy tactics. Provided they hold true to this, it looks the RIAA is finally focusing its money and time on targeting music uploaders rather than music downloaders, and is starting to do some work on respecting the privacy of the individual. Unfortunately, they aren't abandoning their current (asinine) crop of lawsuits, so I can only gain so much respect...


• A Mr. Wendell Jamieson gives us a very different take on It's A Wonderful Life. What's better than lit crit? Cynical lit crit!


• POSTNotes. These are briefings and longer works from the UK's Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. I have not gotten a chance to read them yet; I'll edit with a review when I get a chance (and encourage you readers to let me know if this is just terrible stuff). In the meantime, I just dig this idea; it's both a quick way to get an update on current science, and a nice little way for government to make itself a bit less opaque.


• And finally, your dose of schadenfreude: Anti-kidnapping expert kidnapped. This is terrible and I hope Mr. Batista gets out of it safely, and yet at the same time there is a dark part of me that cannot help but laugh. Welcome to the downfall of my generation.

Amuse Bouche

It's not so much a link salad as an appetizer for something more interesting down the road, but a link to a blog post is like a blog post, right? Cabinet of Wonders on Coraline, the Antikythera Mechanism, and my favorite topic, digital/analog crossover.

Content-wise, this is better than the Final Rickroll (and it's a fantastic way to showcase the hard work of people who, if they are at the height of their craft, never get noticed). I hope to some day have the sort of blog that invites this kind of crossover.

Next time, I purge an obsession: Transformers

The Scraps

It has come to my attention that I need to stop using the word "never", at least in reference to this blog; for it turns out, upon reflection, that nearly everything I insisted I would never do has come to pass, and that my capacity to actually keep to my Thursday updating schedule is roughly equivalent to my capacity to fly. This is, I guess, a lesson from the universe.

It has also come to my attention that it is Thursday, and I should be updating. The trouble is, it has been a grueling work week thanks to two folks being on vacation (not their fault), and I have spent eight hours a day feeling as though I've had my skull filled with glue while someone with no grace or etiquette force-fed me bricks. The frenetic energy this stress fills me with has been channeled into working on Eyes of Stone, which is still a beast but is at least a tame one. So I'll be posting later, I hope, provided that I am able to find something clever to say. That is, I will be posting "later"...it's just "later" in this case may mean "Saturday".

Until then, I give you today's xkcd, and the world's most expensive coffee table book. Click in good health.

Witty Post Title, 11/29/08

It figures that after a late-night dose of link salad and an early-morning bout of writing (and the concomitant internal chant of "don't go back and read it yet, don't go back and read it yet..."), I come across yet more links worthy, if not worthier, of inclusion in a link salad. So, prepare to distend your intellectual bellies!

• Yes, you read this video's title correctly: Wii Remote theremin. This is the intellectual equivalent of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.


• Eliezer Yudkowsky, of Overcoming Bias, has some fascinating things to say about the creative process. You all know I'm a sucker for this subject, but I really mean it when I say that this is a fascinating way of thinking about it. I can't get enough of hearing very smart people talk about the process.


• And because it was referenced in the above article: The Mind Projection Fallacy as explained via old sci-fi movie posters. Again, two worlds collide; I think this one is more like an intellectual Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, with the Wii Theremin standing in as the bacon chocolate chip cookie.

Real post to come after I finish laundry.

A witty post title to keep you warm at night, 11/29/08

Link salad for you, while I consider my post, which I have appear to have forgotten how to write:

• In case you didn't see it, it's true: Cartoon Network has perpetrated the Final Rickroll. I like to think we'll look back on this as the beginning of a new era.


• For those of you with a political bent: the full text of Lawrence Summers' controversial address (the "women are less committed to science" speech) and an article, sadly not containing the full text, of the so-called "Summers memo". I have made my judgments on these issues and on Lawrence Summers, as much as I can for now, and ultimately, Summers' apparent sexism disappoints me, but I am grateful that he is not in a position where he has direct impact on the issues that is bound to render him blind to, and hopeful that it will not impact the considerable knowledge he brings to the board; I thought you might find these helpful. Wikipedia pages omitted because I just can't figure out how biased they are; the tone used could be that of a journalist with integrity or that of a dissembling apologist.


• To cleanse your palate after that, Language Log looks to be gearing up for a rumble. Over what, you ask? Why, over proper usage of the term "pentathlon". These are the sorts of things us nerds will cut you over.


• Britain deploys TV cameras designed to detect crimes before they happen. No, I'm not kidding, and no, I'm not happy. The system sounds ridiculous, and that's exactly my problem with it—what right do they have to pull this kind of maneuver on the populace at large? The quote about where money should be spent sums it up beautifully, but it does not adequately address my reaction to a story from two years ago about London Homicide's list of the 100 British people most likely to commit crimes. This wasn't a hypothetical list, either; this is a list of people that they were going to try to steer into counseling, or even possibly arrest. I have previously considered moving to the U.K., but this, combined with the "crime-detecting" CCTV systems as evidence against reformation in the two years since that article, give me pause. (Bonus silver lining: Enjoy the fact that concerns about excessive surveillance and invasion of privacy are raised in a quote from a man called an information commissioner.)


• And to wrap this one up: Just as we started with the ultimate expression of the Rickroll, we will end with the ultimate comeback to crude pickup lines.

That's all for now; my inability to write my post has now spread and metastasized, and I have found myself unable to operate simple Ctrl + commands. A better post with more original words when I return from sleep tomorrow morning.

A Chaser, Hold the Unicorn

Because I really don't want this blog to devolve into "Tyler, the Bitchy Elitist"...and because my bouts of bitterness are nothing compared to my bouts of whimsy...

I am not the target audience for dragons. We established that. I am the target audience for swingy little songs about summoning primordial beasts.



And a fun fact that puts a whole different spin on this: "mzungu" is a Swahili* word that means "white man".



*or so says the Googletron, anyway.

Witty Post Title 10/27

Worn-out apologies for not posting last Thursday; it was my birthday, you see, and one of my presents was an excuse. I will be making it up later this evening, but for now, I am at work, and it is beautifully foggy, and my eyes feel like bags of lead stuck to my face. My brain is not in a good state either; I suspect it has something to do with the decision of all machines to revolt against governmental machinations and pretend for as long as they could that it was already time for the Daylight Savings switchover. This morning was a long stretch of black, gray, and groaning. At least we got some fog and some cloud cover.

Later tonight, you will hear about computer piracy, or possibly dragons; but for the moment, it is time for some delicious link salad.

• Search engines savvy actually rewires brains. I offer this as a counter to the people who claim a technology-based evolutionary slow-down.


• Book of Mormon full of grammatical errors. I am not generally one to make fun of others' faiths, except in the same playful way that I am one to make fun of other people; but every time I think of this article I think of the phrase "Bible fanfic"...


• Horrifying Sex Toys from Beyond. This no way work safe; this is work genocide. It's rusty, it's dirty, it's been bled on by an armadillo with AIDS, and the worst part is, when you read it you will be laughing so hard that your co-workers will demand you tell them what's happening. Bonus points to my readers who understand the radio joke.


• Geoff Pullum rants about "mixed cardboard". This is mostly here so I can, in the future, use the term "nerdview".

Orientation

I guess in theory tonight's the night I'm supposed to update. But like so many minds, I am allergic to routine. This Thursday like so many, I remember my promise and I find myself unsure of what to say.

The writing continues apace. Grows, even. I keep working my way toward a voice I love, a turn of phrase that makes me smile; that sort of lifelong work that I can't escape and don't want to, but the same lifelong work that makes a writer wonder if he's gotten "there", the "there" where you're happy and productive and wake up every morning and shake your head in wonderment at your success.

I have a lot of irons in the fire--a story I'm writing, two novels I'm editing, and another story waiting in the wings to sprout a plot. I have ideas that I discard and ideas that won't go away, and I have some queries sitting at magazines and agencies that I can only hope blossom into acceptance. More likely I'll have something else to hang on my wall with the other rejections, but at this stage in the writing game it's all about the dream.

This past weekend, I watched two writers get married. The officiant quoted Nathaniel Hawthorne, and while I know it was there to touch the newlyweds, it also managed to touch me: "Words--so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them." I wish I could say it was my motto, if only because that would make me feel so very clever; but every time I consider that I imagine myself in an ironic outfit, smiling bitterly at the unclever little world, and I don't want to be that guy any more than I want to always sound like a cross between William S. Burroughs and a textbook.

So for now, that is your update, and I hope to have something more philosophical and polemic next time. But so you don't feel like all you've gotten is a glimpse into my life, I would like you to know that Warren Ellis has written the greatest recipe for sweet potatoes ever. I don't care how it tastes; this man manages to make cooking feel perverted.

A Link, to Cleanse the Palate.

xkcd, once again, tells the truth. I could add to this statement, but really, I'd just be gilding the lily.

Not Quite Content

This isn't "the post for the week" by any stretch of the imagination, but I absolutely had to throw this out to the world (or this limited slice of it) while it was still logged in my memory.

Perhaps I am the last to know; perhaps not. All I can say is, if you enjoy a mix of wit and critical discourse, or if you've ever loved seeing a story laid out on a table and dissected, then I cannot recommend this highly enough: TV Tropes.

Lest the name fool you, the site is not just about TV--it's a total discussion of literature, anime, TV, movies, and every other form of narrative. It's a dissection and analysis of all the little things that make stories tick, and it comes with wit and not a small amount of open discussion. Enjoy it with my numerous compliments.