tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44908061206438043242024-03-13T10:54:57.136-07:00Resistentialism IncarnateYour dishwasher hates you.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.comBlogger201125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-86920824209315694642010-11-17T10:51:00.000-08:002012-11-27T05:52:35.958-08:00In which I complain about the TSA on my blogI don't post here much these days, but I did want to mention <a href="http://m.news.com/2166-12_3-20023038-281.html">John Pistole's recent testimony</a> before Congress. Let me highlight this bit from yesterday's transcript:<br />
<br />
"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">That being the case, I think everybody who gets on a flight wants to ensure and be assured that everybody else around them has been properly screened and, oh, by the way, everybody else on that flight wants to make sure that I have been properly screened or you have been properly screened.</span>"<br />
<br />
I don't actually think so highly of my safety that I feel the need to be sure that my fellow passengers are either molested or digitally strip-searched. We're talking about hurtling through the sky in an aluminum tube here. There's a lot that can go wrong, resulting in my fiery death, and terrorists are actually pretty low on the list.<br />
<br />
You want me to feel safe in the tube? Show me the pilot's credentials and record. Show me the plane's maintenance records, and your procedures for screening and monitoring mechanics. I'm far more interested in whether the engines are going to fail than whether some fuckwit has a bomb in his panties. Passengers know enough now to watch for and try to stop the latter; we've got a fighting chance at all stages (though, more of a chance if we're not lulled into a false sense of security). The former, we can only watch the pretty sparks. But I guess terrorists make a bigger splash on the news than pilot error or mechanical failure, so that's what the TSA is worried about.<br />
<br />
I'm not against taking reasonable precautions, but just remember there is no such thing as "safe". Just more or less likely to die. We can get the best pilot in the world in a brand new plane with no passengers at all, and it can still go down from a bird strike. All we can do is raise the bar and ask ourselves whether a given procedure makes us safer in proportion to the cost to our comfort, dignity, sanity, time, wallet, and honor.<br />
<br />
That last bit, to me, is what this is really all about. Bickering about whether digital strip searches and grabbing peoples' crotches makes us "safer" or not is beside the point: This is a dishonorable way to try to make ourselves safer, full stop.<br />
<br />
(Finally: Remember, folks, complaining about the TSA on Twitter and your blog does <b><i><u>nothing</u></i></b>. Worse than nothing if it satisfies your anger and prevents you taking further steps to make things right. I've written to my Congresscritters on this subject. Have you?)Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-90417138163282645712010-08-07T11:38:00.000-07:002010-08-07T11:38:46.772-07:00Thesis as localized repulsor<a href="http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1353">This PhD comic</a> was doubly true for my thesis. First, the phenomenon he describes: every time I started to do anything else, the thesis beckoned. There was a constant refrain, "must work on thesis." But actually sitting down, I found the text physically repulsive. Once at the keyboard, it was constant work just to force myself to type.<br />
<br />
For me, it was true in a second way: that local repulsor model describes the control scheme I used for multi-robot formation control, based on Leonard's work at Princeton. (That is, the robots were all attracted to each other from a distance, but were repulsed when they got too close)<br />
<br />
I am highly amused.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-78288244537123712482010-08-06T18:40:00.000-07:002010-08-07T07:12:16.500-07:00Sentence of the day<a href="http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/08/bruce-cumings.html">Tyler Cowen</a> says,<br />
<em>‘Overall I seek to narrow rather than widen the following category: "cannot be praised without accompanying symbolic denunciation.”’</em><br />
Can’t possibly agree more.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-76701001868500632522010-07-31T17:34:00.000-07:002010-07-31T18:56:46.870-07:00Livescribe pen<p>So I broke down and bought the Livescribe Echo, which I mentioned on my other blog. I’m really impressed. It does a lot of things, right, particularly its choice of demo apps. It’s the first piece of technology I’ve owned in a long time that I just don’t know how it works.</p><p>Well, that’s a little bit of an overstatement. The pen has a camera pointing down the barrel of the ink cartridge, and when you press down, it looks at the pattern of dots and determines from that where, on what page, in what pre-saved notebook it’s looking at. It only records what’s written when it’s on: I tried writing a bit with the pen (with power off) then turning the power on and drawing a line through it, and it only recorded the line. I suspect from that, and looking at how it picks up the lighter strokes in my handwriting, that it’s not actually recording the sight of a line being laid down, but the position of the pen relative to the dots while pressure is on. (Which means that I really need to press down more firmly while writing!) But I don’t know what it is about the dot pattern that makes it recognize where it is so well.</p><p>As for usage:</p><p>I doubt I’m often going to use the recording feature: lectures and meetings, most often, so maybe once or twice a week, depending on whether my coworkers are leery of it. It would be nice to bring to <a href="http://www.sff.net/paradise/">Viable Paradise</a> in the fall, but I’m not sure whether recording devices are allowed. I’ll ask at some point. (Did I mention I got in? I got in! It gives me hope that I might actually manage to publish something, and thereby become an author instead of merely a liar!)</p><p>I’ve also found that the handwriting recognition does a very poor job with my exceedingly poor handwriting. I can’t decide whether editing the results of OCR would be better than simply retyping what I write. So, I probably won’t be jotting down blog posts or anything.</p><p>However, even without those features, I really like the pen: I constantly lose notebooks (and pens, actually...) and the idea of having my writing backed up greatly appeals to me. I had been taking photos of my notebook and storing them in Evernote, but it’s a cumbersome process and I have issues with proper rotation.</p><p>I’m also intrigued by its SDK, the ability to create my own applications and my own paper. It would be pretty cool to be able to print up maps that it recognizes, and then plot out character movements from room to room, then go back and ask it where certain characters were at particular times.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-49716927427698026212010-07-28T06:47:00.000-07:002010-07-28T06:47:52.795-07:00Bento BoxesI've been trying to be better about packing my lunches lately, and it occurred to me that having a set of bento boxes might make my life easier. I've looked around online and seen a lot of plastic ones, but it's hard to judge size and shape from online pictures. Does anyone have one they like?<br />
<br />
For that matter, does anyone have any packing-lunch suggestions? I'd really like to be able to pack a week's worth in advance, as I tend to be only semi-functional in the morning...Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-52980158759270171112010-07-15T05:19:00.000-07:002010-07-15T05:53:46.796-07:00Celebrity Juries<p>I’ve been thinking a lot about high-profile cases like the Mehserle trial. People are really upset over that one. I don’t claim to be an expert on it, having not watched the trial, nor even learned about it until the jury was in deliberation. But one thing that strikes me is that the folks who are angry don’t seem to really have trusted the jury.</p><p>Well, that leads me to ask: who do Americans trust? Celebrities. We need celebrity juries.</p><p>This has been done before, to great effect, in the investigation into the Challenger explosion. (Remember Richard Feynman with the O-rings?) People trusted that result, it worked. I don’t know if the members of that committee really were experts, or if it even mattered.</p><p>Here’s what I propose: Go through the list of people applying for Dancing with the Stars or similar reality shows. (That, or hang around the back lots of Hollywood studios looking for child actors rummaging the dumpsters.) Offer these people a hot meal and some amount of legal training, and then let them continue their publicity-hungry ways.</p><p>Then, when there’s a major trial, call them in. Use focus groups as part of jury selection: go out and pick up the angriest-looking people picketing, and anyone they ask for an autograph is in. Obviously, a lot of them will be disqualified for drug or drunk-driving offenses, but there should be a sizable pool left over of celebs who never got caught.</p><p>Things go on normally from there. Celebrities may not be the brightest people, but they’re certainly no dumber than your average person. And they have enormous egos -- they’re less likely to be awed by police officers or expert witnesses.</p><p>Then when the trial is over and the jury comes back from deliberations, you trot them all out in front of the cameras. They smile and wave, and deliver the verdict. It may very well be the same one that an ordinary jury would bring back, but people will trust it more if it comes from celebrities.</p><p>Now, I’m not only saying this because I think that people are stupid. The point of the jury system in the first place was that a person should be tried by their peers -- not only for their own sake, but so that the community would trust that the result was the same as if they had personally been there. It’s not merely or even primarily about fairness, but about confidence. I don’t think that we have that anymore, our cities and communities are just too big, and we don’t know each other. But we do feel like we know celebrities, probably more than we feel like we know our neighbors in many cases. Ergo, in order for the public to have confidence in the results of jury trials, those juries need to be filled with what passes for our neighbors today. Sad, but possibly necessary. Maybe we can get away with just having celebrities as jury foremen.</p><p>(I was going to insert a Paris Hilton joke here, but I’m reminded that she’s actually the only person in her generation of her family to *make* money rather than just spend it. The jury, if you’ll pardon the pun, is still out on her, I think) </p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-1474087441241538522010-07-08T19:51:00.000-07:002010-07-08T19:54:21.170-07:00Psst! Over here!<p>Just a friendly reminder that I’ve moved discussion of my writing <a href="http://johnmurphy.wordpress.com">over yonder</a>. Recent posts include discussions of the <a href="http://johnmurphy.wordpress.com/tag/outline/">outlining process</a>, an <a href="http://johnmurphy.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/planning-the-murder-and-conducting-interviews/">experiment with ‘interviewing’ my characters</a>, and some of the <a href="http://johnmurphy.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/reading-the-official-c-i-a-manual-of-trickery-and-deception/">lessons I’ve learned</a> from the Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-89415303813614988622010-07-07T06:19:00.000-07:002010-07-07T07:59:45.990-07:00Doing Homework or Excluding the Hurried?<p>I was recently reading a blog that I follow, written by someone I respect. (I’ll refrain from naming him here, as his identity isn’t actually germane) I frequently do not read the comments on this blog: I don’t have a lot of time, and frankly, I go there to read what he has to say, not his commenters. (Dangerous to say, given that I’m curious what my readers think, but I tend to think of Internet comment threads as a pox on civilization)</p><p>This morning, though, the post was specifically about the response to an earlier post, so I skimmed the comments a bit. In them, someone asked a (I thought) relevant question about a somewhat unwise use of slang in a quote from an older post that was relevant to this one. The blogger responded, answering the question, but then taking the commenter to task, saying “Forgive my annoyance, but this was explained many times in the comments for that post. It's just a matter of scrolling down and reading the conversation, if you are confused.”</p><p>This struck me at first as patently unfair. In the post being referred to, there are pages of comments, more text than the original post. And frankly, I find that many comment threads put me off my feed: there’s a lot of stupidity out there on them thar interwebs. It’s usually safer not to read them. However, this is someone whose courtesy and thoughtfulness I have rarely had cause to question.</p><p>So now I’m wondering: what’s the etiquette here? To what extent is it reasonable to expect someone to read through a comment thread before asking a question? To what extent is it OK to chide someone for not doing so, versus simply not answering the question, or answering the question without further comment?</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-8927070910591577422010-06-29T10:39:00.000-07:002010-06-29T07:35:22.048-07:00Open Tabs 5: The Clever Sub-Title<p>I seem to have accumulated a couple of interesting links, mostly about food, recently. Allow me to share them.</p><p>* <a href="http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/03/a-new-kind-of-coffee-bar/?hpw">The Ka-Pow bar</a>! This is awesome. So, chocolate bars are made by grinding cacao beans, extracting cocoa butter, then remixing them in a different proportion, with added sugar, milk solids, vanilla, almonds, whatever. <a href="http://www.sahagunchocolates.com/index.php">These geniuses</a> substituted finely-ground COFFEE for the cocoa in the remix stage. I am in awe. But it’s been 80 degrees in the shade here, and there’s no way I’m going to have them shipped to me from OR right now. So, I will either wait, or track down a source of food-grade cocoa butter for my own nefarious purposes.</p><p>* <a href="http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/05/the-burger-lab-how-to-make-perfect-mcdonalds-style-french-fries.html">Making perfect french fries</a>. Basically it comes down to using acidulated water to strengthen the pectin in the potato, holding it together better during cooking. Also useful for potato salad, actually. They do a similar investigation with <a href="http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/05/does-pre-blanching-improve-potato-chips.html">potato chips</a> (you may call them “crisps” if you prefer being wrong)</p><p>* Speaking of french fries: Cooking Issues also takes on the quest for French Fry Supremacy (<a href="http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/04/27/the-quest-for-french-fry-supremacy-part-1/">Part 1</a>, <a href="http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/05/12/the-quest-for-french-fry-supremacy-2-blanching-armageddon/">Part 2</a>)</p><p>You’d think that after reading all that about french fries and seeing electron microscope pictures of french fries and even seeing some dude *sand* a french fry, that I’d know how to make the perfect fries. Sadly, I don’t. But that’s OK, I need to be doing less deep-frying.</p><p>But it’s not all about food!</p><p>* <a href="http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/2010/06/abandonware/">Abandonware</a> by An Owomoyela is an awesome spec-fic short story up on Fantasy Magazine’s site</p><p>* Speaking of fiction, Chuck Wendig, esq posted <a href="http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2010/06/29/codpiece-johnson-pt1/">Part One of Codpiece Johnson and the Hamsters of Anamnesis</a>, part of an ongoing saga of being careful what you say online.</p><p>* <a href="http://playthisthing.com/hoist-sail-heliopause-and-home">Hoist Sail for the Heliopause and Home</a>, interactive fiction by Andrew Plotkin. I haven’t actually played more than a minute or two of this one, but it looks fascinating.</p><p>* NYTimes article on p<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/business/27pot.html?pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me">ot shops in Colorado</a>. This subject is interesting to me: I don’t really have any interest in the drug itself, but I do think that a looser set of restrictions would do a lot of good for US society. The country’s various stabs at Prohibition have been uniformly bad for us, and this time our country’s drug habit is in the process of destroying Mexico. Finding another solution seems incumbent upon us.</p><p>* This is an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/business/16proto.html?hpw">older Times article</a> on the various custom-order items available on the internet, including custom-tailored shirts. I’m really hoping to be able to buy shoes this way. I can walk into a shoe store, state my size, and be presented with at most two pairs of shoes that fit me. There are those reading this who are snorting at my broad spectrum of choice compared to the waste land that shoe stores are to them. <a href="http://shop.vans.com/catalog/Vans/en_US/category/custom-shoes.html">Vans</a>’ is among a number of stores that come close, but they don’t let you specify width! The “customization” is all about selecting color. I suspect that the answer is likely to be a machine that makes them on demand.</p><p>* On a related note, I keep trying to remind myself to visit the <a href="http://www.harvard.com/bookmachine/">Harvard Book Store’s books on demand machine</a>.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-40104584652131582402010-06-28T19:30:00.000-07:002010-06-28T19:59:59.041-07:00There Goes My Appetite<p>I admit that many of my food choice decisions are made on the basis of “Awesome” as opposed to “Good”. Friendly’s has a cheeseburger now where the bun is a pair of grilled cheese sandwiches. So awesome. I should have known better than to look up the nutrition information *sigh* (1500 calories, not including the side of fries)</p><p>On the other hand, if I skipped lunch and split it with someone else, it might actually be reasonable. Or, if I didn’t eat anything else all day except coffee and celery...</p><p>No, no. I must focus. The Double Down, by contrast, looks practically like a salad with its 540 calories!</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-52827658549716644172010-06-27T16:53:00.000-07:002010-06-27T16:53:22.898-07:00Getting Back Into (Mathematical) ShapeI've recently been reading a fascinating article entitled, <a href="http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html">The Mathematician's Lament</a>. By coincidence, I also had an <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100513162755.htm">article about solving Boltzman's equation</a> up in another tab. Both of them have started me thinking: back in grad school, I had to do a reasonable amount of math on a regular basis. Calculus, algebra, geometry. Nothing really difficult, but it kept me in practice.<br />
<br />
Now, though, I don't use much of it. A lot of statistics and some discrete math, but not much else. I'd like to keep in practice, but it's tough to find a place to get interesting puzzles to play at. Googling mostly turns up stuff aimed at kids: the "make math fun!" dreck that the Lament laments. I have all my old math textbooks (especially discrete math) Anyone have any suggestions? (feel free to pass along the link to this post to anyone who might)Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-88617929190470254172010-06-17T16:42:00.000-07:002010-06-17T16:54:02.131-07:00Farmer's Market<p>L. and I went to the farmer’s market this evening, and there was a stand selling seafood -- the proprietor drives down to the coast in the morning, then drives back with a haul of fresh cod, scallops, and lobsters. I bought a 1lb bag of scallops, which smelled absolutely delicious: sweet, really, and very faintly of the sea. I grilled them on skewers with just a brushing of canola oil and a sprinkling of salt. Fantastic. That plus a loaf of garlic bread, a bunch of carrots, and a jar of pickled beets, makes for a nice haul.</p><p>We’ve been impressed by how well the market is doing this year. The samosa stand in particular is just doing phenomenally well. Thanks to the warm weather, all the stands already have lettuce and other greens. Hell, we’re already a couple weeks into a very early strawberry season!</p><p>Looks look we’ll be eating very well this summer...</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-30918173727410494722010-06-17T07:26:00.000-07:002010-06-17T07:37:09.904-07:00Reminder<p>Just a quick reminder that I’ve moved discussions of my writing <a href="http://johnmurphy.wordpress.com">elsewhere</a>. There are happenings! I’m sending stuff out, and it’s getting rejected. OK, that’s ... that’s all the happenings. But still.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-10561522212979532092010-06-16T08:52:00.000-07:002010-06-16T09:05:09.661-07:00Chess<p><a href="http://www.teamhassenplug.org/monsterchess/">This chess set</a> may be the most awesome thing you see all day. It’s pretty remarkable, but at the same time well within reach of a dedicated group of students armed with some good reference books. (... and $30k worth of legos and computers) It would not surprise me if they said that building the robots took more time than programming them.</p><p>The biggest surprise to me, actually, is that they were able to use Bluetooth to control the robots. My experience with Bluetooth in Lego Mindstorms was mostly negative: short range, few control channels. My guess is that they must have the robots listening on shared channels, and prefacing commands with some kind of ID string: that would also explain why so many of the movements are sequential.</p><p>Post-match battery charging must be a royal pain in the ass. I also wonder what kind of corrections are needed during a long match: Sensor error and actuator slip accumulate, so that over time, as a robot moves its internal position can get wildly out of sync with its actual position and orientation. With a more sophisticated sensor suite it’s not a trivial task. It must be very difficult with the equipment they appear to have.</p><p>Anyway: my hat is off to Team Hassenplug. That’s pretty damn cool.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-43592239353031614422010-06-08T12:04:00.000-07:002010-06-08T12:05:47.924-07:00New Mac 2<p>It arrived!</p><p>I am somewhat in awe of the Mac transfer program: all of my programs and settings were transferred perfectly, even my ssh keys and volume settings. I’m not entirely happy that I had to sit and wait three hours to get to use it, but it’s like my old machine was transformed into a newer, faster one.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-73526806075742664612010-06-06T13:48:00.000-07:002010-06-06T13:52:05.554-07:00New Mac<p>I just ordered a new Mac laptop to replace one that is plainly on its way out. (It gave good service, but its time is nearly up)</p><p>I am told that it is easy to transfer my files and applications to another Mac, but having not done so I’m wondering if any of you have done so: did you have any problems? Was there anything you wished you’d done beforehand? What did you do with the old laptop?</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-79997122759758425822010-06-06T07:15:00.000-07:002010-06-06T07:20:39.277-07:00The Kindle Lives!<p>I’d been getting increasingly frustrated with my (1st-gen) Kindle: half the time I’d pick it up, and it would be dead, frozen. I’d turn on the radio, and it would freeze. I’d written it off for a while, and then realized that all of these problems were at least loosely consistent with a dying battery. One $20 replacement later, and it works like a charm!</p><p>To celebrate, I finally picked up a book that’s been recommended to me a dozen times: H. Beam Piper’s “Little Fuzzy”. They were right to recommend it, it’s really good!</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-9060225974387138482010-06-05T05:47:00.000-07:002010-06-05T05:49:56.203-07:00Psst! Over Here...Just a quick note: I'm moving my writing posts over to my <a href="http://johnmurphy.wordpress.com/">new Wordpress blog</a>. I figured it was a bit more professional, and let me post more varied stuff over here without worrying about de-emphasizing my writing. There's a permanent link over on the right hand side, and a list of the most recent few posts.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-50390467179102780522010-05-31T11:12:00.000-07:002010-05-31T11:26:27.375-07:00Dungeon-Sweeper<p>Found a fun little <a href="http://playthisthing.com/mamono-sweeper">semi-addictive game</a> this afternoon, a variant on Mine Sweeper. (Linked to an English page at Play This Thing; the actual game is on a Japanese page, but is easy to play anyway) Instead of mines, you’re uncovering monsters of differing levels, and the objective is to not just find them, but to clear the board. There are monsters of level 1, 2, 3, and 4, and the numbers indicate the total levels of the surrounding monsters. You start off at level 1, and can click on level 1 monsters (blue blobby things) with impunity. Uncovering a monster above your level does damage to you (though you do get experience!) and so you have some ability to click around in the beginning.</p><p>If you have trouble (as I do) keeping track of your logical deductions, you can hover over covered squares and press the A and D keys to cycle through the different levels of potential monster. (They don’t bother with level 1, because you can always uncover those)</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-89622640213215557552010-05-28T20:55:00.000-07:002010-05-29T06:47:40.036-07:00Pandora rocks<p>I now have a Pandora station that plays almost nothing but bagpipe music. This makes me insanely happy. Emphasis, possibly, on “insane”.</p><p>Carry on.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-82976374519851243222010-05-23T18:49:00.000-07:002010-05-23T19:40:18.665-07:00A Little Bit Off the Top<p>Phew! I managed to cut “The Body and the Bomb” down from 9,000 words to 7,600. It’s not quite the 6,000 that had been recommended to me in the excellent advice from the reader at Strange Horizons, but I think I’ve improved the pace considerably. I’m a little less sanguine about how well clued the story is: I think a number of readers are going to guess the ending midway through. I’m gone through and removed some clues, muddied the waters a little, but it may still be too obvious. Still, I think it’s a solid enjoyable piece, more so now.</p><p>So I think that my plan of action will be to send this draft as-is to the next two electronic markets. If neither of them takes it, I’ll shelve it for a month and try a more thorough hack job later.</p><p>Besides, I don’t want to spend too much time on that now, because I’ve got a nice shiny new short story in the works. The tentatively titled “A Stab in the Dark” looks to run about 5,000 words, and is a lot more in line with traditional murder mysteries with alibis to break and weird clues to frame correctly. It’s got a good solid plot, and I think it will be a lot of fun to read. My original plan for it revolved around what turned out to be a really clumsy, flimsy clue -- but I kept picking at it, and managed to shove that bit to the side in favor of something much more iron-clade.</p><p>One of the things that I’ve really struggled with is how to make these actual science fiction mysteries: that is, I want the science fiction aspect to actually be important, not just “Sherlock Holmes in Space.” These should be stories that just can’t work in 1920s London or the modern day. Looking back, I think I’ve had the most success with those stories that would fall apart without the sci-fi element: space-borne telescopic arrays, robots as lethal instruments, pervasive sensor logs, home-built nuclear weapons, etc. </p><p>I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the stories that don’t really need that aspect (“Down Came a Blackbird” and “The Detective and the Detective”) are the ones that I’ve really stumbled on, the ones that have given me fits. But the ones that work, I’m pretty proud of. The writing is still pretty rough, and I’m sure I’m making plenty of amateur mistakes, but I’m happy with a lot of what I’ve written, it doesn’t make me nervous any more to show them to people.</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-71441164756157375352010-05-19T05:58:00.000-07:002010-05-19T08:10:58.915-07:00Stuff to Read<p>Been finding lots of great stuff to read (or listen to) out on the interwebs lately, and just realized that I haven’t bothered to share a lot of it! Oops.</p><p>The first big find has been a trio of podcasts: <a href="http://escapepod.org/">Escape Pod</a>, <a href="http://podcastle.org/">PodCastle</a>, and <a href="http://pseudopod.org/">PseudoPod</a>. Each one is an audio short story podcast for science fiction, fantasy, and horror, respectively -- they’ve got good readers and good taste. (I know so, because I heard about them from <a href="http://shwetanarayan.org/bibliography.html">someone who also has good taste</a>)</p><p>Not one for the listening? Well, step this way! Plenty of great free fiction online. If you’re not reading <a href="http://www.strangehorizons.com/">Strange Horizons</a>, or <a href="http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/">Beneath Ceaseless Skies</a>, those are your natural first stops.</p><p>Not enough? There’s plenty of good stuff online. All the links above will get you to some good fiction. If you’re looking for individual authors, have a look at <a href="http://terribleminds.com/ramble/holy-shit-free-thing/">Chuck Wendig</a> (whose blog is also well worth reading), and <a href="http://www.saladinahmed.com/wordpress/bibliography/">Saladin Ahmed</a> (I’ve been reading everything by him that I can get my hands on -- great stuff!)</p><p>And if that’s still not enough... I have some drafts that need editing? :)</p>Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-59106170748697024032010-05-08T12:37:00.000-07:002010-05-08T15:30:25.630-07:00In Which Our Heft Turns Out To Be Pretty Good ProtectionOK, I get it: alien invasion of Earth is a fascinating thought experiment. We’re all familiar with the history of exploration and colonialism, and it’s a useful exercise to imagine all of humanity on the wrong side of it -- preferably in the face of something mean and scaly.<br /><br />But articles like <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/the-moral-alien/?hp">this one</a> (repeating to some extent Stephen Hawking’s recent musing on the subject) that talk about hordes of aliens skipping from planet to planet stripping them of resources miss one important point: Invading an occupied planet for its resources is stupid, stupid, stupid. Here’s the thing: there’s almost nothing on this planet that cannot be found, in abundance, on the various moons, asteroids, comets, and other small bodies in our solar system. Water? All over the place. Hydrocarbons? Maybe, but there are smaller moons that look pretty good for that, at least for the simple ones [1]. Gold, iron, platinum, uranium, tritium: there for the taking.<br /><br />What do those sources not have? Angry defenders (to be brushed away like gnats, natch) and a big honking <a href="http://www.xkcd.com/681">gravity well</a> (Link found quickly and easily via <a href="http://andromedayelton.com/dckx.php">DCKX</a>!). Yup, everything stolen from us pathetic Earthlings has to be hauled uphill at considerable cost. Whereas to drive off aliens stealing our asteroids, we would have to develop ships to go attack them. Even if you were a total badass, if you’re that interested in resources, you’ve probably got accountants who will tell you the right answer.<br /><br />So, the moral of the story is, if aliens ever rain death upon us, it won’t be so they can steal our gold, it will be because they simply want to kill us. Possibly because they watched Glen Beck.<br /><br />Now, there do remain potential invasion scenarios which do pop up from time to time. First possibility: capture a whole lot of semi-intelligent hominids to use as slaves, mining marshmallow peeps on Regulus V. (What? Where do YOU think they come from?) [2] Second possibility: Settlement, either permanent or temporary. (Both of those say a lot about the conquering aliens, in a “why do you have this technology, but not this other one?” way that leads to interesting books) Now, Prof. Hawking could argue that these are highly likely to be the case, but I’m not nearly so sure.<br /><br />[1] This leads to the hilarious-to-me situation where “Aliens invade Earth for its oil” is actually the most plausible of the “resource stealing” scenarios... and is the one that nobody will touch because it’s just too corny and heavy-handed. Gotta love that.<br />[2] My personal theory is that Earth is a secret sweatshop for an alien race that really, really likes second-hand plastic.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-44847857434584803002010-05-08T10:50:00.000-07:002010-05-08T10:56:11.325-07:00In the year 20XX..I’m not saying it’s not ridiculous or over the top. I’m not even saying it’s good. But this <a href="http://screwattack.com/videos/Mega-Man">Mega Man fan film</a> is definitely awesome. Go on, spend 90 minutes reliving those Saturday mornings on the couch with a blocky gray controller and aching thumbs.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4490806120643804324.post-75400270620006838252010-05-07T13:24:00.000-07:002010-05-07T13:27:17.076-07:00Advice For the DayEvery now and then, it bears repeating:<br />Not everything in life is a test of your religious or political convictions. People who think otherwise are tiresome.Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229649515127565797noreply@blogger.com2