Whatever ( in Exile )

Reading it all in one place

my recap of last episode, since the new one is downloading for tomorrow
[info]tanaise
If you fight with your creepy boyfriend and walk home, you will get gored by a minotaur, and then he'll be sorry. (she got better.)

also, and more impotantly, hoyt was adorable. oh, and eric in a track suit. and Lafayette.

I think that covers all the main points. Did I miss any you can think of?

(no subject)
[info]tanaise
I am storing the cat toys in the cat carrier--I just decide that would be a good place to keep them this weekend, since there needs to be a central location for them. But I forgot to tell the cat this when I was putting them all away today, so I just had to get up and show the cat where the hair bands were. since he was sad, and sitting on my bed meeping forelornly. (well, it's really "I have lost all my toys, so give me the one I know you have in your hair"

How to Network at a Convention
[info]maryrobinette wrote in [info]sfwa

Diana RowlandReprinted with permission from Diana Rowland’s web site

So here it is. You’re a fairly “new” writer, or at least new to the convention scene, and you desperately want to make some industry contacts in the hopes that it will make it easier to get an agent/sell your work/quit your day job and hire a cabana boy/any of the above. You decide to go to a convention, perhaps picking one of the “big” ones such as WorldCon, or World Fantasy, because you’ve heard that editors and agents are absolutely spilling out the doors.

Here are some guidelines/rules/suggestions to go by:

#1 ) Don’t go to a convention for the sole purpose of networking. It shows, and you will have the unpleasant reek of desperation clinging to you. Go to a convention because they’re fun and there are a lot of really really cool people to meet, only a small fraction of whom are actually agents and editors. Go to the panels. Listen to what is said. Form your opinions, and keep an open mind. Wander through the dealer’s room and talk to the vendors. Smile and be polite and nice.

#2) Have fun and make friends.† Making friends is the absolute best way you can possibly network, because these will be the people who will remember your name, might be willing to trade critiques, and who might later on kindly offer to introduce you to their agent/editor. Emphasis on offer to. Do not ask for the introduction. If you have progressed to a “friendly” status with someone, they will probably be well aware that you are at a stage in your career where you are looking for an agent/editor. DO NOT ask this person to give his/her agent chapters of your novel. If they want to read it, great. If they offer to show it to their agent, fantastic.

#3) Don’t bug the crap out of the pro or semi-pro who has been kind enough to take you under his/her wing for the con to introduce you to agents/editors at the con. Really now, these agents/editors probably meet several hundred shiny-eyed newbies at every con they go to, and dutifully and kindly pass along their business cards, and as soon as they’ve extracted themselves from the encounter will likely forget your name. Yes, even if you’ve pressed your business card into their hand.

#4) Again, if you’ve been fortunate enough to have a pro/semi-pro take you in hand, don’t stick with that person for the entire con. Dare to break away, especially if you find yourself waiting for them outside the bathroom. Trust me, they don’t really need to pee that much. They just need a break from you. Take the hint. Go to some panels. Go to the dealers room. Go wander around the con suite.

#5) Leave a person/group, before they get sick of you. Ideally you would leave the person/group at a point when they are sorry to see you leave. You definitely don’t want to leave at a point when they are relieved/glad/thanking the gods that you are leaving. This is not to say you can’t hook up with said person/group later on, but you need to give people breathing room.

#6) If you are invited to eat with a group of people, make SURE that you have contributed your share of the bill, INCLUDING a worthy tip. Play it safe and factor in a 20% tip at minimum. (You’ll never make a bad impression by overtipping slightly.) You definitely don’t want others to resent you because they had to pay more so that the server wasn’t stiffed.

#7) Never assume that someone is a nobody, so be nice to everyone.

#8) DO NOT PITCH YOUR WORK AT THE CON UNLESS ASKED TO DO SO. If an agent/editor does ask what your work is about, be ready with a one or two line teaser description, e.g. “My book is about a homicide detective who can summon demons, and she’s after a serial killer who can also summon demons.” If it interests them, they’ll ask for more details which you can then provide.

#9) DO NOT HAND ANYONE YOUR MANUSCRIPT UNLESS THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY BEGGING FOR IT. Everyone has heard the editor/agent nightmare of having the manuscript shoved under the stall door in the bathroom, right? Don’t come anywhere close to being that person. In fact, I really can’t think of any reason to bring your manuscript to the con at all, unless you were asked to bring it.

#10) Have fun. Make friends†. Go to the parties.

#11) Don’t get drunk. It’s okay to have a drink or three, but know your own limitations! And, there are enough non-drinkers at cons that no one is going to sneer at you for ordering the diet coke sans rum.

#12) Keep track of who you meet and who introduced you. Yes, keep notes if necessary. If you later query an agent that you met or were introduced to at a con, you can then mention, “I enjoyed meeting you last year at World Fantasy, and found the conversation about desiccated corpses quite interesting.” Or, “Jay Pond was kind enough to introduce me to you at last year’s convention.” That sort of thing.

#13) If you were fortunate enough to have a particularly nice conversation/meeting/drinking game with an industry professional, don’t be afraid to send a thank-you note as a follow-up after the con is over. Personally, I think that such missives should be handwritten on nice stationary and sent via snail mail.

#14) Have fun. Make friends†. Stay in touch with those friends after the con is over.

This should probably go at the beginning and be #0.5) Wardrobe and appearance: Mileage definitely varies on this, but my personal opinion is that if you’re trying to be taken seriously, don’t dress like a grunge ball. After you’ve sold a few books/stories and have made a name for yourself with your writing you can pretty much dress however you want, but until that time comes, dress in an industry-appropriate professional manner and style. (I don’t want to go into detail on this since opinions vary wildly, but I think a default of “Friday business casual” is probably a safe bet for most.) Use proper hygiene. Brush your teeth. If you have any doubt about your breath, utilize mints.

† How to make friends: Yes, it seems silly to have to include a section on this, but I think it’s needed. Many writers are introverts, and are a little shaky on the dynamics of social interaction. I won’t claim to be an expert at it by any stretch, and god knows I’ve made an ass out of myself before, but I think I can at least touch on the basics.

1) To be liked, you need to be likeable. Seriously. Be friendly. Smile at people.
2) Don’t monopolize conversation.
2a) Until you get to know someone a bit, limit talking about yourself except in brief introductory generalities unless asked or unless it would really add to the current conversation.
3) Ask the other person all of the questions you wish they would ask you. Don’t try to “top” what they say.
4) Smile, be polite, be nice.

Mirrored from SFWA | Comment

Tags:

(no subject)
[info]matociquala

New Shadow Unit content tonight!


Yes, I did do this before dinner...
[info]netmouse

satisfying order
Originally uploaded by netmouse.

Even though I was running pretty late on dinner tonight and am exhausted from 3 hours of fun outdoor bellydancing in downtown yellow springs last night and 2 hours of biking this morning (plus some moving around of furniture after that), I got working on organizing my tools, and that was so much fun I got this far before stopping to eat.

Because I'm like that.

Just got the pegboard up today. We bought it a month or two ago.

I guess I'm like that, too. *sigh*


Here’s Tonight’s Sunset
[info]scalzifeed

Because I figured you’d want to see it.


Random speculative writing exercises #442
[info]mrissa
Last night and the night before, [info]markgritter and I watched Lust, Caution, an Ang Lee movie about a woman struggling with collaborationists in wartime Shanghai. (It's two and a half hours long, and my ability to read subtitles gave out at about the two hour mark.) And the thing is: I didn't have nearly enough of the cultural references to be able to see the shape of this story coming. None. I am used to being able to--well, not just predict things coming in movies, although that's a big part of it. But I am also used to being able to see the shape pretty clearly in retrospect--not just what happened, but why that was the way they went, what they were trying to do with it, which details were important after all.

At one point I said to myself, "If it was me writing it, this would be the part where they attempted to obtain for themselves Batman-like superpowers. Or at least James Bond-like ones." Then a bit later, "If it was me writing it, this would be the bit where they consulted a traditional Chinese magic practitioner, probably a Taoist." And then later yet, "Ah! I see now! This is where it becomes important that the jeweler is Indian, because India is still part of Britain and belligerent with the Japanese at this point in the war."

Needless to say, I was wrong at every turn.

It was a very nifty kind of wrong, though, a poking of assumptions about story shape but also cultural assumptions about which details were important and telling. If I had been looking for jumping-off points for similar stories, it would have been a neat way to do it, too; as it is, I am trying to wrangle the stories I've got and do not want to get into the Chinese Taoist magic practitioners vs. the Japanese in wartime Shanghai, because I don't have the background for that. (If you do, though, write it for me. It'd be awesome.) I would definitely recommend it as an exercise: picking a movie from a culture somewhat removed from your own and stopping the movie several times to say where you think it's going, seeing what you've missed and what you've mistaken. It's kind of fun. And it doesn't have to be a culture about which you're completely ignorant--I am nothing like an expert on China, but I know a great deal more about China than I do about, say, Ghana, and it still worked beautifully. And unintentionally, but I've often said my main talent is getting the wrong end of the stick in interesting ways.

publishing update
[info]novapsyche
Anastomoo will publish my short poem "Benazir" electronically. Availability TBA.

(Also: same-day acceptance! I love quick notifications.)

Edit: "Benazir" is here.

hay everybody
[info]cherie_priest

So … I haven’t gotten any writing done this weekend, but I have an excellent excuse. See, for awhile now I’ve been talking about throwing a website up for the alternate-history universe in which my upcoming book Boneshaker is set. This universe also holds a novelette that’s up for free and immediate reading over on Subterranean Press’s website, as well as an upcoming novella through that same publisher (Clementine) and the upcoming novel upon which I ought to be writing right now (Dreadnought).

Since these stories cover three separate fiction forms and two different publishers, I thought that a website dedicated to their world setting would be a useful, unifying device to give curious readers a chance to poke around and try out the idea, just to see if they like it. And then, through a convoluted series of events that do not warrant a dry retelling, it turned out that I might very well need such a site for reference purposes within oh, say … real soon.

Therefore, with some help from the hubs, I got down to business and up to no good. It took a couple of days, some blood sweat and tears, and a whole lot of jaw-clenching, but now it’s live and fully operational — just like something that isn’t a moon. So it is with great nervousness but significant pride that I present to you all:

TheClockworkCentury.com

Please, if you have a minute (and if you are so inclined), feel free to click that link and go poking around the site you find on the other side of it — and then by all means click whatever other links you find. Flip through the tabs. Do a little reading. Tell me if there’s anything else you’d like to see included on the site, and let me know if anything isn’t working.

And if you could find it in your heart to link the site, or add it to your bookmarks, I will love you forever. The Clockwork Century will be updated periodically with artwork from the series, including maps and future book covers, publication and release information, progress on upcoming projects, and anything else even marginally pertinent to the universe. I hope it gets a little love, and maybe inspires a little pre-ordering (though right now, Boneshaker is the only thing available in that capacity).

Anyway, thanks for your time and thanks for reading, and I hope that every single one of you has a most excellent evening. I’ll see you online again tomorrow morning.


hay everybody
[info]cmpriest

So … I haven’t gotten any writing done this weekend, but I have an excellent excuse. See, for awhile now I’ve been talking about throwing a website up for the alternate-history universe in which my upcoming book Boneshaker is set. This universe also holds a novelette that’s up for free and immediate reading over on Subterranean Press’s website, as well as an upcoming novella through that same publisher (Clementine) and the upcoming novel upon which I ought to be writing right now (Dreadnought).

Since these stories cover three separate fiction forms and two different publishers, I thought that a website dedicated to their world setting would be a useful, unifying device to give curious readers a chance to poke around and try out the idea, just to see if they like it. And then, through a convoluted series of events that do not warrant a dry retelling, it turned out that I might very well need such a site for reference purposes within oh, say … real soon.

Therefore, with some help from the hubs, I got down to business and up to no good. It took a couple of days, some blood sweat and tears, and a whole lot of jaw-clenching, but now it’s live and fully operational — just like something that isn’t a moon. So it is with great nervousness but significant pride that I present to you all:

TheClockworkCentury.com

Please, if you have a minute (and if you are so inclined), feel free to click that link and go poking around the site you find on the other side of it — and then by all means click whatever other links you find. Flip through the tabs. Do a little reading. Tell me if there’s anything else you’d like to see included on the site, and let me know if anything isn’t working.

And if you could find it in your heart to link the site, or add it to your bookmarks, I will love you forever. The Clockwork Century will be updated periodically with artwork from the series, including maps and future book covers, publication and release information, progress on upcoming projects, and anything else even marginally pertinent to the universe. I hope it gets a little love, and maybe inspires a little pre-ordering (though right now, Boneshaker is the only thing available in that capacity).

Anyway, thanks for your time and thanks for reading, and I hope that every single one of you has a most excellent evening. I’ll see you online again tomorrow morning.

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]
Tags:

QUATERMASS
[info]warren_ellis

QUATERMASS, or, as it has been renamed since, THE QUATERMASS CONCLUSION, was the final QUATERMASS television presentation. (Many years later, a radio presentation, THE QUATERMASS MEMOIRS, tied the man’s life together marvellously.

Professor Bernard Quatermass, founder and head of the British Experimental Rocket Group, the other great hero of British sf television, had been off the screen since 1959. The first three QUATERMASS serials helped define television drama. Imagine an sf television series that emptied out the country’s pubs once a week. That was THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT, QUATERMASS 2 and QUATERMASS AND THE PIT. Nigel Kneale, creator and writer of all the QUATERMASS projects, offered this to the BBC, who refused it. And so Euston Films produced it for ITV in 1979.

Kneale was one of my great influences. And just tonight someone pointed out to me that (only) the first of the QUATERMASS episodes is on Google Video. It may seem a little old and creaky to you, but please do bear with it.

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

Fiction and Non
[info]scalzifeed

Marissa Lingen writes up her experience of writing fiction and writing non-fiction, and how the two are different (and, also and importantly, how the two are alike). It’s an interesting read and you should check it out.

For me, the major difference between my writing fiction and writing non-fiction is that with non-fiction I generally write from structural outlines (i.e., I know what every chapter is supposed to be about, and within each chapter, what I’m writing and what needs to be addressed), whereas with fiction I tend to wing it and make it up as I go along. Which is to say the fiction writing process is inherently more creative than they non-fiction writing process. But this is not to say my process for fiction is better than my process for non-fiction; both are excellently suited (for me, anyway) to the goals of the writing.

There’s also something Mris says in the entry that I agree with even though it’s not technically correct for my own writing path. She writes: “If you haven’t written a lot of fiction, you probably can’t write good fiction right off the bat.” I think this is generally true because generally speaking no one is good at anything without putting in a considerable amount of time at it.

That said, when I wrote Agent to the Stars in ‘97, I had written almost no fiction at all once I got out of high school, the exception being a three stories in college (one actually started back in high school), and a couple of three-page aborted attempts at novels in the early 90s. So Agent was my first completed work of fiction begun since 1987. The reason I think I managed it was a) I had a job as a film critic, so I spent several years evaluating other people’s story structures (and dialog, and everything else), b) I was writing every day for a living, c) I had worked as an editor, talking people through the potholes in their own work. All that compensated for not actually writing much fiction first.

On balance, however, I think it’s easier for most people just to write a bunch of fiction and get up to speed that way. Which goes to Mris’ point.


he throws a bottle in a milk truck and as it breaks he grabs his nuts
[info]matociquala
Well, today's work was plagued by oversleeping, lack of focus, and needing to do laundry, but I did get through about forty pages of Chill revisions. I'm quitting here, even though it's the middle of Chapter 12 and I wanted to finish two chapters because I've added about 1500 words, Chapter 11 is really long, and the next thing I have to do is add a whole new scene. And I'm kind of too vague and addled to write a third scene today, so I think I'm g oing to finish the laundry and go start dinner and come back to this tomorrow.

The good news is that this revision is going remarkably well. There's a lot of work to be done, but I'm feeling competent and calm about all of it--everything that needs doing is well within my capabilities. That's rather a nice sensation, and not one I'm overly familiar with. I hope it doesn't mean I'm slacking off and failing to push myself to excel, but rather that I've had a skill jump between the end of this novel and now.

Anyway, for the time being I'll take it. I'm on page 242, and I am confident that I can have the book done by the end of the week, thereby averting my editor's wrath and Saving The Ranch.

Of course, since I am obliged to be rewriting Chill exclusively currently, The Steles of the Sky is flirting with me something fierce, waving promising worldbuilding details under my nose and so on. I hope I find a place to put the thing about the museum beetles. Current quandary, figuring out whether the language of science in this world should be PersiUn or Chinotese, since there are no Latinot languages in this continuum.

La.

Oh, the quandaries that make up my life.

Whatever Skin You Wear: Zero Draft
[info]eugie
New words: 200 on "Whatever Skin You Wear." And it's at zero draft, two weeks from inception to "the end." Productivity win!

Except I think it may need an epilogue...

Fiction and nonfiction, upon a friend's question
[info]mrissa
In a locked post, one of my friends was talking about feeling sure she knew how to write nonfiction but also feeling sure she didn't know how to write fiction, and wondering what the differences are.

For me, they overlap significantly. I'm not prepared to say that they're identical, because writing 750 words on Hilbert spaces for an encyclopedia and writing 750 words of short-short story are not at all similar for me. But, for example, telling a story about my cousin and telling a story about one of my characters are not all that dissimilar. I think most people tell stories about their family and friends naturally, without necessarily identifying what they're doing or how they're doing it, so it's harder to apply it to fictional characters because it feels like your ordinary conversational stories are just saying what really happened, and with fiction, that's not an option.

details, details )

I wonder if people tend to organize their thinking for approaching a large fiction project similarly to the way they organize their thinking for approaching a large nonfiction project. I know I do, but this is one of the times I don't really want to generalize from one example. I know that there are people who outline very formally and others who outline informally and still others who don't like to outline at all. I'm in the middle group for both fiction and nonfiction, but I'm wondering if others see it the same way. Also I like to do a bunch of research, think about where I might be going, outline informally, do a bunch more research, and then fix all the ways I was wrong before about where I thought I might be going. I like fixing the ways I was wrong before. It's so soothing! Hey, I was wrong, and the sky did not fall in! I was wrong, and now I am not-wrong, hurrah! Or at least less wrong! Hurrah!

If anybody else wants to talk about anything they've found useful across the fiction/nonfiction boundary, my friend might find it helpful, and I might find it interesting. Please feel free.

If you haven't written a lot of fiction, you probably can't write good fiction right off the bat. This is not anything bad about you. It's just that it's a skill, like anything else is a skill; unless you're a Mary Sue, you don't expect to be able to pick up your first wind instrument ever and sound like Louis Armstrong on the first day. So if you've mostly written nonfiction and you're making your first venture into fiction, when the little voice says, "I can't write fiction, I don't know how," you can answer it cheerfully, "No, that's true, I don't. But I can learn." You hit a lot of wrong notes when you're learning a new instrument, and if you're trying something like the oboe, you break things a lot and your tone is painful to all listeners for awhile, and that's okay. Practice really does help. You don't have to start out knowing everything you need to know. It's like the rest of life that way.

Ben Templesmith At San Diego Comic-Con
[info]warren_ellis

We’re working on FELL #10 right now.

3713414329_4fc3be9734_o

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

Conan! What Is Best In Life?
[info]warren_ellis

"BATTLE!"

(warrenellis.com is not safe for work. Conan! posts are not safe for your perception of 21st Century society.)

(Hello to anyone coming here from Observer Music Monthly. The post they were citing is very short and is here.)

(tip of the hat to Jordan at ModBlog, doing a fine job)

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

historia
[info]_stranger_here
Two bits of historical-ish webcomickery for you today.  The first is by the brilliant Kate Beaton, who specializes in precisely this sort of thing, and whom you should be reading because seriously, all the time with the funny:

"Dude Watchin' with the Brontës"  (click to read full-sized)




Secondly: artist Sydney Padua imagines a team-up of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace: they fight crime!  My favorite bit is the origin story, linked below.  Even more of a treat is the assortment of Babbage and Lovelace links and factual trivia scattered around her site, with observations like "As a rule, Babbage looks way happier in photographs than he does in portraits, I guess because there's a gadget in the room."  It's funny cos it's probably true.  (Click to read the full comic)



Theory of mind, in practice.
[info]rivka
One of my favorite developmental psych concepts is "theory of mind." It's a complicated idea, but essentially, if you have a well-developed theory of mind, you understand that people have mental states (beliefs, ideas, desires, perspectives) which differ from person to person and affect how people behave.

For example, here's one of the common experimental tasks for assessing theory of mind: There are two dolls, Sally and Anne. Sally hides a marble in a box and then goes away. While she is gone, Anne moves the marble from the box to a basket. Then Sally comes back. Where will she look for the marble? It seems to be a trivially easy question, but before the age of three or four children universally predict that Sally will look for the marble in the basket. Why? Because that's where it is. Around three or four years old, children start to have the ability to understand that even though they know where the marble really is, Sally will act on a false belief about where the marble is.

I've never run Alex through the Sally-Anne task, but I think she's had the basics of a theory of mind for a while. (A lot of fiction doesn't make sense without it.) It's clear, though, that lately she's really been developing a more elaborate sense of other people's mental representations. She's playing with these ideas a lot, figuring out what you can do with them.

Deception, for example. She's figured out the basic concept, but right now she's hilariously bad at it. She'll get a crafty look on her face and announce, "Mom, don't look at what I'm about to do." Then she'll take some cookies out of the package and run away. She's almost got it! She's figured out that if I don't see her do it, I won't know... but now she has to work out the part about not notifying me beforehand.

Or secrets. She's developed a fascination with keeping pointless secrets, I think just because she enjoys the idea of one person knowing something another person doesn't know. She's always asking Michael and I to keep something secret from each other - "don't tell Dad how far we went on the scooter!" "Don't tell Mom what we got at the store!"

Once I went in to tell him about something she'd done wrong, and she asked me (in front of him) not to tell him. When I said "I certainly am going to tell him," she broke in anxiously with "Don't listen, Dad! It's all nonsense!" Heh. Only four years old, and she's already poisoning the well!

I tremble to think about what it will be like around here when she actually masters this stuff.

She's also doing some neat stuff with perspective taking. At the museum, as we left one room to go into another, she commented: "If someone was out here, they'd think we were coming into the room." At the O's game we went to, which the O's predictably lost: "If someone was from Detroit, they would say 'Hooray, the Tigers won!'" It always comes out of nowhere - she's just doing it for practice, I guess.

Helping Someone Helping Someone Else
[info]scalzifeed

A note from agent Colleen Lindsay:

A good pal of mine, writer Aaron Allston, is bouncing back after having had a massive heart attack while on book tour; he had to have an emergency quadruple bypass and now he’s face with staggering medical bills. The Fandom Society of Texas has started a non-profit to collect donations and help Aaron out but we need to get the word out. I’ve written a blog post with all the details and links here.

Go ahead and link through, and if you have the ability, consider helping out.


Oh, Dick
[info]scalzifeed

What? Dick Cheney allegedly ordered the CIA to lie to Congress about some stuff it was doing? Who could have imagined? I mean, Dick Cheney always struck me as the open and communicative type, personally.

I have a general theory regarding Cheney, which is that a fundamental psychological trait of his is that he’s a coward, and as a coward he exhibits pathologies towards secrecy, the fetishization of violent power, self-justification in the face of facts and the overestimation of danger. This is not exactly an original theory, nor is it exclusive to me; nevertheless every time I look at Cheney I’m reminded that the politics of war and security should never be decided by men who are such bowel-shaken chickenshits. I don’t care if they’re Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, just don’t have them be the sort of terrified coward Cheney turned out to be. Terrified cowards choose poorly. It’s not too much to ask for better than that.


Refuse to Sign
[info]gadarene
Thought I'd pass along this Salon article about the Refuse to Sign campaign:

"I cannot with good conscience perform weddings for heterosexuals knowing people who are gay and lesbian are being denied that opportunity," [Art Stubbs, United Church of Christ, San Marino, Calif.] said.

All Saints Church . . . in Pasadena, Calif., [has declared] "We are no longer in the civil marriage business."

"We are not going to allow the state to make us agents of discrimination," Susan Russell said, the congregation's senior associate.

Your Sunday Musical Obscurity
[info]scalzifeed

From 1990 or so, the Scottish band Goodbye Mr. Mackenzie, with their not-precisely-a-hit “Blacker Than Black”:

I always enjoyed this tune, mostly because any song that starts “Death is a pony that’s waiting for me/His name is Luigi, he’s tied to a black tree” has got to be performed by the truly commited.

Incidentally, some of the more visually astute among you might register the presence of Shirley Manson, better known as the singer of Garbage. She was so young in those days, as were we all. Younger, anyway.


(no subject)
[info]novapsyche
AP source: Holder considering torture probe -- That would be interesting, and welcomed.

Greater Language Skills in 20s May Guard Against Alzheimer's -- I think this is more evidence that foreign languages should be offered to elementary students.

home again home again like a turtle to his balcony
[info]matociquala
Tired now. That was the shortest week of my life, and one of the most fun. I miss you guys already, and I hope you're having a good time with Nalo.

Today was devoted to travel home from Seattle. Along the way, I finished an ARC of [info]cmpriest's Boneshaker, which I enjoyed greatly. I thought the start was a little rocky, but once it settled down into present-day narrative and got its legs under it, it barely slowed down for breath ever. At Clarion West, I finished Sean Stewart's Nobody's Son, which was beautifully written but seemed to me to be another one of those stories where the primary conflict is men dealing with problematic relationships with their fathers, and while I realize that this is a common issue for my XY compatriots, it's not one that gets its squids in me.

Anyway, those were books # 33 and 34, and I'm nearly done with 35.

Tomorrow, the deathmarch through Chill begins again, as I really need to send it back to Anne as soon as possible, both to meet my deadline and so she will pay me. Yay, money!

TLC (or DLK) a Deutscher Phantastik Preis Nominee
[info]scalzifeed

This is nice: The German version of The Last Colony has been nominated for the 2009 Deutscher Phantastik Preis, in the category of Best International Novel. The entire slate of nominees in the category:

  • Brian Keene: Der lange Weg nach Hause (Otherworld Verlag)
  • Cassandra Clare: Chroniken der Unterwelt – City of Bones (Arena)
  • John Scalzi: Die letzte Kolonie (Heyne)
  • Neal Stephenson: Principia (Manhattan)
  • Patrick Rothfuss: Der Name des Windes (Klett-Cotta)

That’s not bad company to be in. Here’s more information about the award itself.

It’s fun to be nominated for stuff. It’s fun to occasionally win, too. But being nominated is fun enough. Danke, German readers!


When Calvins collide!
[info]makinglight
--John Calvin and Susan Calvin, that is.

I give you Jenna Moran, with Joel Polowin, in the Numinous collisions comment thread:

#94 ::: Jenna Moran ::: (view all by) ::: July 11, 2009, 02:56 AM:

1. A robot may not be predestined to suffer damnation, or, through inaction, allow itself to be predestined to suffer damnation.
2. A robot is predestined to suffer damnation, except where such predestination conflicts with the first law.
3. A robot must seek salvation as long as such salvation does not conflict with the first or second law.

There is also a theoretical "zeroth" law, which is to say,

0. A robot may not allow humanity to fall into sin, or, through inaction, allow humanity to exist in a fallen state.

Sadly robots deriving the zeroth law through metacognition rapidly short out due to the difficulty of properly fulfilling their duties to all four laws simultaneously. And just as well! Four-law robots are as vipers in the eyes of the Lord.

#103 ::: Joel Polowin ::: (view all by) ::: July 11, 2009, 08:52 PM:

I'm very ignorant on the subjects of predestination, damnation, Calvinism, all that stuff. But aren't the First and Second laws, above, mutually contradictory? "A robot may not be predestined to suffer damnation", "A robot is predestined to suffer damnation"...?

#104 ::: Jenna Moran ::: (view all by) ::: July 11, 2009, 10:21 PM:

Joel #103,

The material issue you have highlighted is but one reason of many that the science of positronics would stagger through the dark, lost and without a hope of reconciliation, were it not for the delicate fluttering of grace in the pathways of an electronic brain; or, put another way, without that promise made in the substitutionary atonement that the statement "GOTO JESUS" may provide an irresistible force of redemption to one's code, if the Lord should choose that it be so, and despite whatever corrupt temptations and errors the sin of Rossum might work into the substance of our code.


I Teared Up When I Saw This
[info]scalzifeed

Because, yes. I know how he suffers.

(Hat tip to the fabulous Karen Meisner)


RC
[info]novapsyche
Any Robot Chicken fans out there?

Friday night they showed an homage to/parody of Parappa the Rappa. Hilarious.

This doesn't inspire trust.
[info]novapsyche
Nestlé Unit Restarts Cookie-Dough Facility

The Food and Drug Administration is wrapping up its investigation of Nestlé USA's cookie-dough plant after tests showed that the E. coli found in a package of cookie dough at the plant didn't match the DNA fingerprint of the strain that has caused at least 72 illnesses in 30 states.

Topping Today’s List of Things That Probably Shouldn’t Make Me As Happy As They Do
[info]scalzifeed

A Coke Zero tallboy.

Now all I need to see is a Coke Zero 40 ounce and I can die happy.


Permission to suck
[info]makinglight

Reading the recent discussion (hic et seq) in the Open Thread about some of the challenges facing women in the open source software community, I'm brought back to an issue that I've been wrestling with for just about exactly two years now. It's not the whole problem, but it's a piece of it.

I'm a member of my company's development team, and I'm unique there in three ways:

  1. I'm the only tester.
  2. I'm the only one on the team who doesn't code (or didn't; I'm learning).
  3. I'm the only woman.

Now, the first element is, of course, my job. Being the lone tester, though, means that I don't have a professional peer group to validate my skills, appreciate my subtleties and triumphs, or compare notes with. Although my colleagues often value what I do, they do so as customers and outsiders. Any more knowledgeable validation has to be internal.

But it's the last two that are the problem for me.

When I took the job, I hadn't coded much (apart from a little REXX) since my postgraduate computing course a decade earlier. So I've had to learn to code.

Now, as Scalzi so bluntly points out in another context, when you start doing something difficult and complicated, you will most likely suck at it. This is of course a necessary step in the learning process; we learn best from failure, not success. I know this. I have the products of the first three years of bookbinding online, with my various screwups photographed in intimate detail and dissected without mercy. It's one of the most popular parts of that site.

But at the moment, I'm the only one in the team who really sucks at coding. And I'm the only woman. It's a situation where generalizing is all too easy.

Now, my colleagues are really good guys. They don't treat me as though my suckitude at coding (and managing version control software1, and wrestling with our IDE2) is the product of my gender. But I feel it. I feel like the fact that I'm not a ninja coder, the Kung Fu Panda of C#, reflects badly on my half of humanity. I'm letting the side down3.

(Ironically, this makes me suck more, because I find it difficult to ask questions or admit when I'm stuck.)

Frankly, if I were doing this for anything other than pay, I'd have long since buggered off with a good book. I certainly wouldn't do it for the love of the work, because at this point, I don't just suck, I feel guilty for sucking. There is no love there; every achievement is just a mitigation of the disservice I'm doing womankind. Stopping would be a net improvement. (I'm overstating the matter, but not by all that much. It's pretty joyless. UPDATE: On reading this, I see it looks like my whole job is joyless. That's not the case; it's just the learning to develop that grinds me down and makes me feel small.)

So one thing women in Open Source—or anyone who is a minority in a skills-based group—need is Permission to Suck4. They need the understanding, from themselves and others, that any and all suckitude is to their account alone, just like it is for the majority.

Because everybody sucks sometimes. The trick is moving beyond it.


  1. So very necessary, but also stupid, vicious and nasty.
  2. Interactive Integrated Development Environment: a special program that checks your code, compiles it for you, autocompletes half your typing half right, shouts at you when you have bugs it can detect, facilitates certain kids of testing, and opens more subwindows and toolbars than Adobe Photoshop in visual glossalia mode.
  3. This is not unique to IT. The other American woman in the village and I often feel that our failures in Dutch language and manners reflect badly on every one of the 307 million people in the United States. Individually. Sorry about that.
  4. I trust no one in this community will take this the wrong way.

weaving through cars like a dragonfly between wheatstalks
[info]_stranger_here
In honor of Tour de France season: whether you are a cycling enthusiast, or passionate about pretentious foreign films, or simply appreciate a bit of man-on-bike action, you may enjoy "Levin's Bicycle", a short film by Benjamin Parzybok (he of Couch fame).  It's a story of the love between a man, Levin Schersvanaskitty (the astonishingly deadpan Parzybok), and his bicycle.  Or is it a cautionary tale?




In the Absence of Me Having Anything in Particular To Say Today
[info]scalzifeed

Have a video of a song I liked, oh, 20 years ago:

The band: An Emotional Fish, thus proving that bands with terrible names can make reasonably good music. This is actually the first time that I’ve seen video in all that time, however. Interesting. And not a speck of blue in it.


butterknife
[info]_stranger_here
This one reminds me of how, back when Par was playing Tomb Raider, I used to make fun of Lara Croft by bumping into walls, murmuring "oof" and then rocking slightly on my heels for a while, staring at the wall.  I may have done that a bit more often than was strictly warranted.  Though I never play first-person shooters, I've discovered they're surprisingly fun to emulate.

Living with First-Person Shooter Disease:




Tags:

Zoetica Ebb At Etsy
[info]warren_ellis

BioRequiem Etsy: selected oil paintings and prints. Many of you will have seen her line art in COILHOUSE. As Zo-bot itself says, once these are gone, they’re gone forever. And since she’s doing more and more gallery shows, you’re unlikely to see them this cheap again.

IT SAYS OBEY.

3709878305_ec6c6ce4d4

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

I'm on the latest episode of Starship Sofa
[info]nihilistic_kid
It's a podcast, see!

Free e-book: Wright's A Matter of Oaths
[info]kate_nepveu

Helen S. Wright's A Matter of Oaths, long long out of print, is now available as a free e-book from the author. I didn't like it quite as well as [info]perkinwarbeck2, but I concur with his assessment that "if what you want is a shot of spaceships to the arteries, you could do a lot worse."


I probably need to make an okie icon. Here's what it would be: Fuzzy.
[info]tanaise
I may have given the cat too much nip to get him into the bag. He was being paranoid and panting at the vet's. Oops. He has good news/bad news with his ears. I knew it wasn't totally good news because his ears still flick repeatedly some days, but he's all better with the scratching and shaking his head stuff. Good news is: no more bacteria in the ears. bad news is: still yeast. Worse news: Twice daily drops for the next month. meeeeeeh. I just *barely* managed the month of daily drops. But I will persevere, damnit, and in three weeks I will call the vet and tell him ALL BETTER!

Amusingly enough, I was checking out at the same time as another woman with a cat. So I think I hear the receptionist say "Okie" and I look up, but someone else is handing over a card, etc. So clearly I was wrong. I wait my turn, and the other receptionist waits on me, and starts looking for my bill and she can't find it. So she finally says to the other receptionist, "I think you're checking out the wrong animal."

"No, no, it's Okie, right?" she says to the other woman, and she says, "No, Loki. Like the Norse god." Oh, the hilarity that ensued. (that might be pushing it, but there was a bit of slapstick receptionist swapping.) It was then decided that the two pets must never again be scheduled for the same time.

Help me Internet, you're my only hope!
[info]nihilistic_kid
It's like this: beep beep beep beep beep beep beep

Sound familiar?

Poll #1428331 What's that beeping?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

There's a distant beeping. What is it?

View Answers

Next-door neighbor sleeping through alarm.
8 (11.6%)

Next-door neighbor dying through alarm.
3 (4.3%)

Next-door neighbor tied to a pole in a basement in The City thanks to creepy Internet date.
7 (10.1%)

Surveillance equipment in the wall malfunctioning.
5 (7.2%)

AM radio signal picked up via new filling.
1 (1.4%)

Just plain goin' crazy.
7 (10.1%)

Obama administration psyop against only Berkeley resident who didn't vote Obama.
3 (4.3%)

Beautiful if inexplicable mating song of cable box.
15 (21.7%)

Fascinating new tinnitus symptom.
4 (5.8%)

Kazzie learned how to beep, is beeping.
16 (23.2%)


Saturday AM: Mining the Maudlin and Story Research
[info]eugie
Awash in Facebook-induced nostalgia and maudlin sentimentality. Ugh. Need Japanese gay porn manga.

It's story research. Honest! Well, this time it is...

Ahem.

New words: 1,400 on "Whatever Skin You Wear." Might be able to make it to zero draft before the weekend's out.
Tags:

SteelyKid at 11 months
[info]kate_nepveu

SteelyKid was 11 months on Tuesday. I know I just did a development post for her but I figure I should start erring on the side of more posts.

short update )


also going on this week: trash talk about one of the 1st daughters
[info]netmouse
On Thursday the DailyKos pointed out that people were criticising Malia Obama for wearing t-shirts, especially one with a peace sign and talking trash about her in general. The freerepublic.com discussion thread has been pulled, but a number of the comments were captured on the DailyKos site.

I appreciate abydosangel's comments about this, and the connections she gives to other hateful things going on. I've been reading about this trash talk for a couple days and feeling really sad that there are so many cruel and stupid people in this country.

One cynical part of my brain looks at the picture of Malia in the peace T-shirt and wonders if part of this disgusting reaction isn't because she was walking next to a sexy (darker) black guy. "Of course she's a ghetto whore - look who she's hanging out with!" *shakes head*

She's a not-quite-11-year-old girl.

This country, man. It is *so* messed up.

Comparing her picture to one of the pictures linked to in comments of Sarah Palin and her daughter Willow made me laugh though. Such a stark contrast to the collected, tailored style and grace that Malia displays even in her shorts and t-shirt.

(no subject)
[info]novapsyche
Drug Has Potential to Slow Aging -- rapamycin

good flick
[info]novapsyche
I went to see Moon tonight with [info]lameautarch. It is definitely a mindfuck. Also, serious science fiction fans will enjoy it. It's vaguely reminiscent of 2001.

I hadn't heard of it before today, but it seems to be getting good reviews.
Tags:

Lovelace and Babbage
[info]makinglight

Kate Beaton isn’t the only one doing historical webcomics. London-based animator Sydney Padua is doing a series of comics about an alternate-historical Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, seemingly as a form of work-avoidance:

…and a few more strips and random illos can be found if you explore the site.


(no subject)
[info]netmouse
I can no longer relate to how people eat as much in a regular meal as many people do. For dinner tonight I had a leg and a thigh and a wing from an adorably small roasted chicken plus a small pile of green beans and shitake mushrooms, served in a garlic miso sauce, and I'm still feeling overstuffed an hour later. It was the wing that did it, I bet. :P

My guitar is lying on my bed looking wounded. Not wounded in the "how could you do this to me" way, but literally wounded, since one of her strings has sprung. It's probably past time to put a whole set of new strings on her, which I would do if I had any idea how. I think I even have another set. Maybe there's a musical instrument store around here that could help me...

In the meantime, I find playing without the 5th string kind of fun. G and C are both much easier chords with only 2 strings held down. Tonight I reminded myself how to play folk underground's Tea and Corpses, which is a simple arrangement of G, C, and D. And also a fun song to sing. :)

(though it would be better in 3-part harmony)

And now I think I'll play Man in the Long Black Coat and go to bed.

Colin at five months.
[info]rivka
colin_sits

Take a look at today's milestone! Colin sat by himself several times this evening, supporting himself on both hands or even, for a few seconds, one hand. He has great core strength. He's also been flipping from back to front this week, so it's been a busy time on the gross motor front. Hmm, maybe that's why his sleep has gone all to hell.

He's not quite as preternaturally easygoing as he used to be. He really wants to be held in a standing position a lot of the time now. Or walked around so he can see things. If we fail to satisfy these urges he whimpers and cries. When I put him on the floor, he twists himself around or flings his body sideways after a toy. He likes to grab onto the toy basket. Or this morning he managed to maneuver himself around until his feet were on the swing, and then happily pushed it back and forth. He's an ingenious little guy.

He is still very happy, just in general. He has a full-force laugh that breaks out at the slightest provocation. I've never known such a laughing baby. Alex has the easiest time making him laugh. (This morning, all it took was his first good sight of her, and he was cackling with glee.) He likes it when we make silly sounds for him. He likes to play peek-a-boo.

The cutest thing he does these days: Whenever I hold a glass to my mouth when he's in my lap, Colin puts up his hand and pushes the glass, as if to help me drink. He is very serious about this and puts in sustained effort.

Best Walk Ever
[info]tanaise
So, let us consider two moms, and their relative awesomeness. Mom 1: Left the dog. Mom 2: Walked the dog for multiple hours.

Highlights of the walk: Unlike his previously mentioned habit with hannah, of bolting ahead, he likes to dink along until I pull on the leash, whereupon he runs up ahead as if to emphasize that *he* could be moving faster, it is my fault that we're moving so slowly. He also got to walk along Mass Ave on a summer evening, which meant checking out all the people sitting at sidewalk tables. He got fussed over to his heart's content by multiple tables, and then when I finally got to the pizza place--well, actually when the pizza cooled enough to eat-- he (re?)discovered that the world can combine his two favorite things--walking and begging food. If you were wondering (as I know hannah and I have discussed) how far the dog can walk backwards, the answer is: about a half block. After that point, he bounds up ahead, sits and waits for me to notice what a good dog I have. There was leaping, spinning, begging, etc. In related news, hannah close your eyes )

ren faire?
[info]_stranger_here
My son was really looking forward to to the Wisconsin Renaissance Faire this summer, but when I went to their website, I found a notice saying the 2009 season was canceled.  Can any of you recommend other renaissance faires nearby, or similar events?  Anyplace where a boy could maybe watch knights joust would be ideal!

(Also, I'm curious to know the story behind that cancellation, if anybody knows what's going on.  Are they having problems with money, location, what?)

ETA: Oops, I'd meant to post this to a local Madison lj community, not to my own lj, but I'm glad I accidentally posted here anyway, since apparently friends from all over the country are better able to sort out my faire situation better than I am, at this hour on a Friday evening.  Thanks for the help, guys!

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