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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
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| Thursday, November 12th, 2009 |
jackkansas
|
12:12a |
Job! Job! Job!
No fewer than three of my friends have forwarded the URL for the Grateful Dead archivist job at UC-Santa Cruz to me. Sorry, folks, but the minimum requirement is an MA in Archival Science. Had I been paying attention in Milwaukee in 1983, I would have enrolled in the UWM program in archival science, like my friend Gene, paid up member of the ILWU, and son of the former head of the Communist Party in the US. Alas! I thought learning UNIX would be a better career path! Current Mood:  cheerfulCurrent Music: "Shakedown Street" (Grateful Dead) |
| Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 |
lovmelovmycats
|
3:12p |
A Kate Beaton quote:
Remembrance Day always makes me ruminative about the place of history in our current consciences, because it is one of the few holidays where we are explicitly told listen you have to remember this thing that happened ok and, one, people pay attention, two, there is nothing jamming the line like bbq's or parties or football games or chocolate eggs or presents. History: You should give a shit, who knew.from her post today ( ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) beatonna), expresses why I like this holiday. Known as Veteran's Day here in the USofA. |
devonapple
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11:03a |
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baxil
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6:20a |
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| Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 |
rhylar
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8:18p |
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devonapple
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8:11a |
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kadyg
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1:01a |
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| Monday, November 9th, 2009 |
slothman
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11:14p |
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kadyg
|
6:51p |
Hi, it's still me
I've been mostly silent for, um, awhile now. (Not as long as baxil's five week stretch, but still.) What I've been doing: 1. Working, actually. I had a wine dinner this past weekend for 20 that went very well. The winemakers were quite happy with my pairings and I had a few people pop up from the table between courses to come into the kitchen to tell me how wonderful things were. So, yay for me. I've also begun hosting a series of what I'm calling Community Dinners. I think I need a new name, but I want to emphasize the inclusiveness that I'm going for. Once a month, I cook dinner and serve it family-style to the first 10 people to make a reservation. ($30/person, 4 courses) Last month, I could have had 15 people if I had allowed it. Because of the way my kitchen/dining space is laid out, I could fit another 4 or 5 people in the kitchen with me. I mentioned this as a possibility to a couple of the diners and they got very excited about the idea. So December's dinner will be for 14 and we'll see how it goes. I wonder if I could upcharge those places? I would also like to get something similar going in Auburn, but I'm going to wait until after the first of the year to pursue it. I want more work down there, and I think this might be a good way to get a foot in. I've also got an email newsletter in the works. I mentioned to Bax that I was going to sign up with Constant Contact and he informed me that Spiral - who hosts my site - provides that service for half the cost. Good to know. I want to get the first one out next week. If you want on the list, let me know. 2. Cleaning. I have posted very dramatically here in the past about the level of clutter and general unkemptness in the house. Since Bax and I are the only two people who live here, it's pretty easy to see where the problems and the solution lies. Last week we picked up a 15 gallon aquarium and stand for very cheap and decided to install it in the office. This necessitated picking up the office. I spent most of the day moving stuff around, throwing things away and generally straightening up. Bax joked that I should make Novemeber National November Cleaning Month (NaNoCleanMo). Since I'm not writing this year, I decided to go with it. Since Nov. 1, I've cleaned the office, scrubbed down the bathroom, cleaned the hallway and vacuumed everything. The living room is on the docket for this week. The kitchen and bedroom are the worst spots, so I've been taking little bites with plans for a major shakedown in both areas in the next couple of weeks. When I'm done, there may be a cocktail party or something to celebrate. (Or I may just drink cocktails by myself and call it a party.) 3. Keeping all the other plates spinning. Still reading tarot cards, still working on the occasional web site, every so often I teach a bunch of women how to shake their booties in the name of female empowerment, still running semi-regular Pampered Chef shows. So, you know, it's a life. |
baxil
|
5:43p |
Why NaNoWriMo?
So, thanks to the discussion in my previous post, I went and made it official: I signed up for NaNoWriMo this year and have been busily writing behind the scenes. This year's goal: 50,000 words, total, period; working on whatever the hell I want to work on, just so long as I'm working. (And so far it is working: I'm still on track for quota.) NaNo has a term for this sort of flagrant non-noveling: being a "NaNo Rebel." So far I've finished a half-done story; written a story from scratch; typed up a ridiculous number of words in D&D campaign journaling (like the old CSI: Luvine stories, but I haven't found the magic spark to make the stories truly cool yet); and am most of the way through writing up a really vivid dream I had in October. Plus I counted about 500 words that I'm about to edit and reprint below -- it was originally written as an LJ comment in a friend's journal, but it was important. (I'm not counting the few paragraphs of blather here, though. I have my limits.)
Why NaNoWriMo?> [I] can't really just write regularly like that. ... NaNoWriMo makes [writing] very regular and machinish. ... [I'm] hardly that sort of machine.If this sounds like something you would say in criticism of NaNoWriMo ... then, first of all, let me make this clear. None of what I say should be taken as criticism of what works for you. That having been said: I am the worst sort of burst writer. My inspiration is erratic, I block easily on long-term projects and get distracted easily when I'm blocked, and sometimes I find myself going months without getting anything of value written at all. I'm also a three-time NaNo finisher. While the material I produce during NaNo is generally decent enough for me to appreciate having written it, that's not its real benefit. What I truly appreciate about NaNo is its ability to knock me out of the expectations of my own head. I start with nothing but a word-count goal and some minimum quality standards, commit myself to set aside the majority of my social life during the month, and treat the whole thing as an experiment in boundary-pushing. My first real NaNo was done solely to discover that I can finish, actually get to the end, of a novel-length work. (It also checked off a ticky-box on my ten-year goals list. There's a separate ticky-box for "finish a novel NOT written during NaNoWriMo". I haven't done that yet.) My second real NaNo (four years later, I should add -- I can't do these things without a cooldown period) was done to prove it wasn't a fluke -- but also as an experiment in serial fiction, because I'd never done a long-form continuing story before. It's not continuing now, but again, I discovered I can, and that was vastly illuminating, and will help me the next time I develop a serializable idea. I am still an erratic writer. I do not generally push inspiration when it's not there, and I still write best in sprints rather than marathons. However, now I know what it feels like to do both; I know how to recognize the traps I fall into when the sprint doesn't push me to the end; and I've written some pieces during multiple sit-downs that I never could have done at a sprint. One of the pieces I'm most proud of writing is a product of that. It's a product, in fact, of my "failed" 2006 NaNoWriMo, in that I set aside to write 50K in interweaving short stories and then finished November at a fraction of that. Do I feel disappointed about failing? That assumes it was a failure! I blew a word count goal and produced one of my life's best pieces of writing. Should I have been disappointed? That depends on what my goal was. And there's nobody measuring that but me. The lesson I took from 2006 is that NaNo is, at heart, a learning experience -- a Rorschach test, if you will, of looking into words and seeing yourself. And what of the years when I did reach 50K? They've been a slog. Sometimes, yes, writing means trudging on without the muse. But that's part of the learning experience, and when you're done, you've had the experience of doing it, and then you stop. NaNo's goal is not to train you to write without your muse -- just to convince you that you can. And to teach you that sometimes doing so can get you more of what you want -- more words, more satisfaction -- than waiting for inspiration. ... I think I again need to emphasize that the NaNo I'm most proud of is the one where I failed, because I got an idea dumped into my head that really was worth writing about, and I stopped and did it right instead of forcing myself to live up to those external expectations. That's the crux of it, right there. While my writing style is spectacularly unsuited to a one-month novel, the reason NaNo has repeatedly worked for me is that I have made it into something that I want to do, and once that happened, by definition it was a success no matter how far I got or whether I met the initial arbitrary goal. (I mostly have, but, well, whatev.) I didn't even try NaNo'ing a novel until four NNWMs in; my first two were an "I'm going to write a journal entry a day!" variant and my third was "One short story per day" (which actually ended up being even more of a muse death-march despite clocking in at ~40,000 words. After that, focusing all my effort on a single novel seemed like a welcome change of pace). And if you have a muse, and some writing talent, and a deep-seated hatred of NaNo, and a little envy of the people who can write 50,000 words in a month? I need to mention how awesome it is that you can work without that NaNo crutch. The vast majority of my writing progress has been with it, in one form or another. And every time you start feeling like you need to be jealous of me for being able to finish a NaNo, take a look at my journal and the five-week dead silence leading up to 11/1, because I guarantee you that the envy flowed the other way while I was stuck. :) Current Mood:  busyCurrent Music: Billy Idol, "Adam In Chains" |
baxil
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6:20a |
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| Sunday, November 8th, 2009 |
devonapple
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10:21p |
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jackkansas
|
8:50p |
Good Joke Feeds? (Use the Net, Luke!)
For reasons too complicated to explain right now, I need a source of good jokes — you know, the kind that admins used to FAX to each other before the invention of the Internet ... the kind of stuff that circulated as a kind of non-profit spam after the invention of email. I suppose some kind of RSS feed would be fine, but I'm hoping to find one that comes recommended rather than just picking one at random. I need to cheer up an old friend who finds these jokes amusing — she's hip, but easily bored, and would rather receive a filtered selection from me (the filtering is synonymous with caring) rather than just strike out onto the Net herself. Naughty, off-color, salacious are all fine — beneath her professional exterior is a savvy girl who's forgotten more about "naughty" than most people ever know — but witty is preferable to crude. She's a doctor and a shrink, and while not a computer geek, her kids are in the trade. All suggestions appreciated! |
devonapple
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4:39p |
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random_girl
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10:45a |
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| Saturday, November 7th, 2009 |
baxil
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6:20a |
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| Friday, November 6th, 2009 |
slothman
|
8:44p |
House of Suns, by Alastair Reynolds ★★★★
In the early fourth millennium, humanity largely lives within the light-hour surrounding our own Sun, and a few wealthy tycoons take up galactic tourism: they clone themselves a thousand times (often with genetic variations, including gender), decanting their personality into each clone, and set out in a thousand ships to travel the galaxy at near-lightspeed, with plans to meet up later. As civilizations rise and fall across the galaxy, these “shatterlings” (with the assistance of technologies for suspended animation, life extension, and time dilation) see six million years pass, trading information and expertise to the worlds they visit.
The book has two parallel stories: a shorter one following the youth of Abigail Gentian, who grows up to spawn the thousand shatterlings called Gentian Line (or the House of Flowers, since all of them are named after flowers), and a larger one following the intertwined lives of two of her shatterlings, Campion and Purslane, who have broken the rules of their Line, fallen in love, and taken up traveling together. They arrive late at a scheduled reunion of the Line, fearing censure by their fellows, and discover that someone has attempted to wipe out the entire clan. Their challenge is to figure out who did it, and why— and to survive.
Reynolds does a good job of keeping the suspense high even as the action stretches over the decades and centuries of interstellar travel. The tale includes some reflections on recent events, including the fear of the Other and the erosion of morality in times of stress. The feel is very much in the New Space Opera style of his other works, but is not as dark as the tales in his Revelation Space universe. Current Mood:  satisfied |
| Thursday, November 5th, 2009 |
jackkansas
|
6:53p |
Grumpy Old Man
That's not how we invented the wheel when I was your age. Current Music: "Kids These Days" (Tom Rush) |
| Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 |
slothman
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9:37a |
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| Monday, November 2nd, 2009 |
slothman
|
11:28p |
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book About the Way and the Power of the Way; Ursula K. Le Guin ★★★★½
In the introduction, Le Guin explains that the Tao Te Ching has been an influential book throughout her life, and that over the years she has made efforts at producing her own rendition of the classic. (She won’t call it a translation, since she doesn’t actually speak Chinese, but she has done extensive research— she provides copious notes on how she chose particular renderings in the back of the book— and produced this in collaboration with a scholar of the language.) Her goal has been to distill the clarity of the classic for a modern reader who is more likely one citizen among millions rather than a leader seeking sagacious insights for rulership. The result is quite good, with a penetrating brevity I haven’t seen in the other translations I’ve read. I actually wound up reading it with another translation to hand when I wanted to get another perspective on the occasional verse, but I think the simplicity of her rendering is a good place to start before going out looking for more nuance. Current Mood: intrigued |
| Sunday, November 1st, 2009 |
kadyg
|
3:26p |
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| Saturday, October 31st, 2009 |
slothman
|
9:14p |
Bitter Angels, by C. L. Anderson ★★★★
I picked up this book based on a Big Idea post before I discovered that the author is Sarah Zettel (whom I already like) with a new nom de plume. She gives us a fine far-future intrigue, with several viewpoint characters caught up in schemes where no one really knows what’s going on. I was particularly impressed by the depiction of a society that has managed to both keep a lid on humanity’s natural warring tendencies and cope with the societal effects of radical life extension. There is a subtle metafictional element as the author hints at tropes from softer space opera genres to put more possibilities in the reader’s mind when trying to unravel the conspiracy, then eventually resolves it in a different way; I found it disconcerting at first when she rang a few “cheesy paranormal romance” alarm bells, but by the time she pulled it with a second genre I found the effect amusing. Current Mood: pleased |
lovmelovmycats
|
8:47p |
When I'm drunk, I google Alexander Hamilton. That is all. |
| Friday, October 30th, 2009 |
slothman
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8:14p |
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baxil
|
4:07a |
Upgrades and updates
My life seems to have gotten a little out of balance lately. I say this because it's a modestly better reintroduction after five weeks of silence than the traditional "*tap, tap* Hey, is this thing on?"It's not that I've been too busy to write; I've got no less than three unfinished short stories (and some completed song lyrics) on the front burner. But that's the problem. For a while my creative urge just dried up (or sublimated into roleplaying, one of my ongoing offline activities that has happily picked up the pace). And now that fingers are hitting the keyboard again, there's such a backlog that I'm dancing around from project to project and falling back into my old bad habits of leaving everything 80% finished. And with so many stories crowding around seeking resolution, I've been putting off journaling in favor of fiction. The good news is that this creative burst is carrying me into winter in high spirits, rather than a few months of endless freaking out over the weather and general lack of daylight. And procrastination has its fringe benefits: for instance, I'm up at nearly 4 AM putting some final polish on a relaunch of the TTU Wiki. I just upgraded its back-end software (after three years and seven releases), which was a lot less painful than I expected, so I wrote some custom code for it to make its category listings prettier (i.e., sorted by columns instead of rows, which is slightly less trivial than it sounds). The wiki has been getting a lot of attention lately, actually. I'm really proud of the glossary of TTU slang, and there's now some excellent detail on events like the New Year's Flyby. And I finally fixed the permissions so that any registered user can make edits wiki-wide -- which should make it a lot friendlier as a collaboration tool. All of which is well and good, but ... it's almost November, and you know what that means. Yes: NaNoWriMo is upon us once again. And, 48 hours from the start of the race, I find myself dithering. On the one hand, a lot of close friends are committing to write, and I really want to join them in solidarity. It would also do me good; some of my best work has come out of the frenzy of the November word-count dance. My creativity is currently working overtime and crying out for outlets. On the other hand, I know, with great and terrible certainty, that if I make any sort of NaNo commitment, all of my half-done projects are going to die ignominious deaths, and that rankles. I've also got more social commitments than usual this year and don't feel like I could devote the time to NaNo that I really ought to. (I also wrote 50K words of Legend of Hero last year, and traditionally I've taken a year off after each NaNo success.) I'm juggling a few ideas for "alternate" NaNos -- I'm no stranger to the idea, having moved from BaMoJoEnt to BaMoTTuSto to novels and back. Perhaps I could create a new page on the TTU Wiki every day, or go back to the classics and post some nonfiction every day? Or maybe I ought to just keep on keepin' on, and spend November finishing my 5-story backlog ... Thoughts? I'm in a state of severe waffle here, so reader input (and especially fellow NaNo-er input) will go a long way toward helping me channel my pent-up writing bug. Current Music: Jim's Big Ego, "She's Dead" |
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