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July 9th, 2008
dictionary_wotd
| 08:13 am - emolument: Dictionary.com Word of the Day
http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2008/07/09.html emolument: the wages or perquisites arising from office, employment, or labor.
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artbroken
 | 06:06 pm
Random thought:
One criticism I've seen of D&D 4E is that there are very few mundane critters in the Monster Manual. There's a wolf and a bear, and horses for riding, but that's about it; everything else is a weird fantasy monster of some stripe, so you can't have heroic adventurers fighting tigers or gorillas etc.
Having been at the zoo on the weekend, I have decided that I like this decision, because I don't want to kill animals, even in fiction. I don't want my dwarf warlock butchering a lion or elephant, because those poor buggers have it bad enough already with the cages and the cold and the spectators. Even imagining my ego-avatar doing that makes me feel bad. No, he can fight demons and giants and six-legged purple insect-panthers with tentacles and special effects; I feel just fine erasing shit like that from existence. I'd rather save animals than fight them, and it may be that D&D 4E might appeal to others who feel the same way.
I don't know if that was the reason for the design choice; I don't know whether it makes me the wussiest man in the world or merely one of the Ten Most Wussy. But it works for me.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/charitycam/blackbox/thoughtful.gif) earnest
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strangehorizonr
| 08:00 am - Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell
http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2008/07/dreamers_of_the.shtml The remarkable thing about Mary Doria Russell's beginnings is their clarity.
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swan_tower
 | 02:19 am - another tick in the odometer
1565 tonight; the previous two days have been 1415 and 1885. I may not get to write this weekend -- short-notice trip to Minneapolis -- so I'm letting myself charge ahead a bit, building up a surplus. I can miss two days and still be on schedule.
I would have stopped at 1259, but that put me just short of 40K. And we all know how I respond to seeing landmarks so very, very close.
Word count: 40,235
LBR tally: We all know what happens when rhetoric fails.
Authorial sadism: Failing. Lots. And not getting your final chance to speak.
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kniedzw
 | 11:08 pm - Lively? What the hell?
OK. Google has gone bonkers. They just released a virtual chatroom ... thing called Lively. Create an avatar, create a room, and enter and chat with your friends there! Sort of like Second Life, but far more limited. (Only runs on Windows. Feh.)
I refuse to put this on my work computer, so I task my friends to play with it and make derisive comments. Or admit to their secret shame of liking it. One critic's take here.
Thoughts?
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yhlee
 | 10:51 pm - Fsck.
I'm on my 3rd page of things-to-fix-in-next-draft-of-Paper Knives [1] and I suddenly had the blinding realization: this novel is about politics. No, really, blinding realization involved reification of a political concept.
I don't want to be writing a political novel, but the draft is done, and it's kind of too late for this time, yeah?
[1] The title sucks and I need a replacement. If anyone who's read the rough draft has a suggestion, I'm all ears. Unfortunately, Origami Souls is out because I'm going to be taking out the last vestiges of origami.
...in conclusion, I R Slow.
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brad
 | 10:42 pm - Car Crash
The Audi's fucked up...
http://picasaweb.google.com/bradley.j.fitzpatrick/CarCrash
(got hit on the left side... maybe my fault? maybe his? maybe both?)
Good thing everybody's okay and the two propane tanks in the back seat (seat-belted in) which I was heading out to refill didn't blow up.
Couldn't find non-emergency number quickly, called 911, they said just exchange contact info and insurance. Did that. Police did show up and took down info and mostly just stood around and watched as me and the other dude had it almost wrapped up by then. Other guy needed to be towed (to his friend's body-shop) but wasn't sure how he was going to pay (no credit card?) so I paid the $200 to the tow-truck driver just to get things moving. Hope that isn't an implicit admission of guilt. Tried to call State Farm to report it but no answer. I drove home, despite the left side doors not opening. Car seems fine.
But I got new propane tanks afterwards on the way home ... who wants to come celebrate a delayed 4th of July tomorrow night at my place? Burgers and hot dogs!
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memento_mori
 | 12:08 am - Darkpages - 'Forcements II
The Menagerie is an enclave out outcasts. Unclean, unloved, unknown. They gather here in the muck and the gloom under the orange hell-lamps. The steel skeleton holds up the earth, a spine of iron; zinc bars like vertebrae bolted to the infrastructure. They call these things "sacrificial anodes." They are meant not to stave off decay, but re-direct it. Above, the Glassworks teeter on the edge of the pit. Not meant to thwart decay, but to re-direct it.
The energies of entropy is focused within. Friction, rust, disease.
The brown-skinned girl's name is Rani. She's not blind, but the scarf around her eyes serves a useful purpose. Without it, things suffer. Above, they might have called her Kali, the Destroyer. Here she's a quiet girl held in the arms of friends and a family that chose her. They call her Rusty.
When the lamps brown out and the smell of ozone fills the air, they know that Corpselight is back. The glow gives it away, serves as their light. That sickly green aura that surrounds his gaunt body. Rani waves in his general direction, sensing the light behind her eyelids. His name, she knows, is Arthur.
A few stragglers follow. One of them, a stranger. But someone they all know. More on her later.
* * * * *
The police men wrench the manhole cover back over the gaping wound in the round. A man with a hardhat and some kind of wrench-like device seals it shut. Amber lights blink on and off, cones divert the sporadic stream of cars. The men know what goes on down there, but that doesn't mean they have to like it.
"Freaky stuff, Lew." says the thinner of the pair. He pulls on his blazer and straightens his tie. "So now what?"
Shrug. "Not much we can do, save call the exterminator." The men sit on the hood of their car and watch traffic for a few minutes. "I mean, it's an animal control issue now, right? She's not exactly..."
Human.
They get in the car. Barbieri pulls out onto the street and they head to Jenny's for an after-work brew.
En route, they talk about the case. Or rather, the lack of a case.
"Fact is, nobody is going to waste man hours or money to go after that freak. And it's not a homicide, no matter what evidence we bring back to the lab. So what? That's it, right?"
Lewis looks out the window, lines on his face growing deeper as he frowns. "Fuck it. We should just grab some shotguns and go fishing. And while we're down there, clean up a bit. You know those tunnels are filled with weird shit."
Uh-huh. They both do. But neither has the balls to actually, you know, go down there and do anything.
Glassworks keeps its own counsel, cleans its own messes.
Usually.
* * * *
Arthur is off in his chamber farther down in the tunnels. Without him there to gum up things, electricity flows. Someone rigged up some christmas lights, a few lamps, a hot plate. Here's a beat-to-shit stereo receiver, power patched in from some exposed wires. Everyone knows not to touch it, even poor blind Rani. The monsters are having a welcome home celebration of sorts. The runaway is here, back among them. The girl.
You've never know it was her. Gone are the vestments, the fishnet stockings, the fetish garb, the weapons. She's just another quiet girl in a sea of quiet, the only sound the rumble of a blown out speaker churning out some old fifties standard. Somehow, it's appropriate.
"Mary, care for more bread?" Someone hands her a loaf of day-old rescued from the rats and roaches. The girl breaks off a crusty hunk and soaks up the remains of some stew. Nobody says where they got the meat but it looks, smells and tastes all right. She eats it and doesn't complain. She doesn't deserve their kindness so she doesn't complain. Since coming back to Hamilton, this is the only thing she has left.
The monsters drove her away, the monsters called her back home. Somehow it's appropriate.
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bryant
 | 12:01 am - RPG Toolkit Meme
Unexpected, but here it is.
What follows is a list of RPGs which, in my limited and human judgment, are frequently used as (or maybe just recommended as) rules toolkits: i.e., the mechanics are used or tweaked to run games in genres or settings other than those presented in the rulebook. For some games, like GURPS, that’s sort of a gimmie.
If you like a system, but you just use it for the setting(s) it was written for, italicize it. If you like a system and it’s one of your go-to tools for running games in random settings, bold it. If you like the game world but don’t care much about the system, leave it alone — you wanna identify the systems that you can practically teach from memory.
Copy to your own blog and repeat as desired. If there’s a game you’d bold that isn’t listed, add it. (I like Unknown Armies a ton, but it’s not one of my generic systems, so I wouldn’t add it.)
( Read the rest of this entry » )Originally published at Imaginary Vestibule.
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July 8th, 2008
squishymeister
 | 11:12 pm - I RAN A TWELVE MINUTE MILE TODAY!!!
About a week into this Sparking thing (April 7)I was super excited because I biked to school, jogged a mile without stopping, which took 16 minutes, went to a strength class, and biked home.
Now it's almost exactly 3 months later. I bike to school regularly, and haven't had to change gears or walk my bike up hills since this summer started, and I do a few days of cardio and strength classes at the gym every week. I've lost 30 pounds, and feel great!
So today I was on my elliptical machine and was getting kind of bored. So I decided to stop at 33 minutes into it and time my mile. I haven't jogged a mile since April 7 (I prefer lower impact exercises while I'm still in the obese range).
I ran a mile in 12 TWELVE minutes! OH MY GOD!!!
OK OK...let's take into account that I did a full hour cardio plus 45 minutes of strength yesterday, and had done 33 minutes of cardio already today. AND I lugged my 200 pound self around that track, which has got to be harder and slower than people who run a mile with only 130 pounds on them.
TWELVE MINUTES!!!
Let's see if I can describe this...when I did the mile in April my GOAL was to not stop. I wanted to run a whole mile without having to stop to walk for a bit of it. This was a HUGE challenge for me! Every step of that mile was a struggle, I was dying to keep going by the end. But I did it, and I was proud. Today my goal was to "go faster" I pushed myself to run faster for longer than I ever have before. Keeping going wasn't the struggle, but not slowing down was the struggle. I don't think i have ever run mile in less than 15 minutes in my whole life! Even when I was a good 40 pounds lighter than I am now. I've always been a very very slow runner (I run slower than people walk), and I have asthma which is an added challenge.
Today I had no trouble breathing, and was running fast enough that the breeze (this was an inside court) was strong enough to cool me off some.
How awesome i
Current Mood: accomplished
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kniedzw
| 06:59 pm - Review: Get Smart
Short form: An enjoyable comedy that was far smarter than I had feared.
( Longer, more spoilerish verdict behind the cut )
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wilwheaton
| 07:43 pm - it turns out that i get to go to comic-con after all
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wwdn/~3/330301541/it-turns-out-th.html I've been going crazy the last month or so, trying to figure out a way to go to Comic-Con. It was about as easy as getting the Babel Fish, but I refused to give up, and earlier today, I finally put the junk mail on top of the satchel.
I am actually going to Comic-Con this year!
I'll be there from Thursday, July 24 until Saturday, July 26. I'm on a publishing panel with Pocketbooks on Thursday called "Star Trek without a blueprint." I'll be there representing volume three of the Star Trek manga, which I think comes out next week.
This is an exciting time for Star Trek, filled with uncertainty and opportunity. I think it's safe to say that there's a lot riding on the new movie, and how it fares will likely affect all of the ancillary Star Trek markets, like conventions, novels, comics, manga, etc.* I don't know if that's what "without a blueprint" means, but if it does, it'll be an interesting conversation. (Of course, it could also mean that CBS is giving much more freedom to people who want to create within the Star Trek universe, rather than forcing them to adhere to a pretty narrow blueprint. That will also be an interesting conversation. My point is that it's going to be interesting, and certainly worth the price of hotel, airline travel, and all the other expenses associated with coming to the show just to watch a one hour panel before you turn around and go right back home.**)
The rest of the show, I'll be set up with my friend Rich and his partners in crime***, who are letting me crash their booth. We haven't finalized my signing schedule, but once we do (and I know the name and number of their booth) I'll update this post.
This will be the only convention I'm attending this summer other than PAX, so I'm really, really excited and grateful that Marco from TokyoPop, and Rich and his partners from awesomeland were able to help me thwart the cleaning robots.
* I remember hearing, during a negotiation for a convention some years ago, that Enterprise was doing so poorly with the fans that it had really hurt convention turnout. I don't know if that's true or not, but I heard it so many times from so many different people, it was either a well-worn talking point or legit. If the new movie doesn't do as well as everyone hopes, we could be hearing about the death of Star Trek again, though I've come to believe that Star Trek is a mighty zombie in science fiction that simply can't be killed. There's a good reason it's still relevant and inspiring to legions of fans forty years after it debuted, you know.
** This statement is completely false. Except for the interesting part. It's absolutely going to be interesting. Also, "interesting."
***I'm not sure if Rich has minions, but if he does, I'm sure that they will be there, too. Hey, maybe I'll fill out a minion application!
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moonandserpent
 | 06:26 pm - Selling Out!
So, I'm moving in a couple of weeks and a) I want to add some money to my vehicle fund b) I'd like to not have to move three million books that I'm never going to use again c) I'm trying to cut down on extraneous material possessions, anyway. So in the spirit of sloth, I'm offering up 99% of my gaming book collection for 5 bucks a pop. Unless otherwise noted, all prices are 5 bucks + whatever shipping in incurred. I'm also willing to work something out for large orders and whatnot.
Any books that I don't end up selling will be donated to any charity that will take them or to that strange LARP that the homeless mental patients play by the dumpster behind my apartment every night.
( Everything Must Go! )
Current Mood: capatalistic
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specficmarkets
[ethan_thomas]
 | 03:23 pm - Winterborn / Nectar: Erotic Horror and Dark Fantasy
Thaneros Online Magazine seeks original erotic horror and dark fantasy between 5,000 to 15,000 words to be released in e-book format. No reprints, no science fiction please. Query for longer, though chances are slim; shorter works will be considered for regular issues only and should be submitted as such. If you must use traditional monsters, use them in unconventional ways.
( More information... )
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theinferior4
[pgdf]
 | 04:59 pm - My New Blog
I'm happy to announce that I'm participating in a new blog. While I'll remain a loyal Inferiorite for personal and literary matters, much of the other material that you've come to expect here from me will migrate over. The full scoop follows.
Please pay a visit if you have the time! And thanks!
PRESS RELEASE
July 9, 2008
Welcome, friends, to an exciting new world of weird!
In fact, many worlds—and so big, we could only call it—
WEIRD UNIVERSE.
WEIRD UNIVERSE is the new superblog that brings together three well-known creators and experts in all things weird.
Alex Boese runs THE MUSEUM OF HOAXES, a well-known enterprise devoted to debunking in amusing fashion the more outrageous claims foisted on a credulous public.
Paul Di Filippo has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer, and has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with his three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.
Chuck Shepherd is the purveyor of NEWS OF THE WEIRD, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre.
Now these three staunch and intrepid correspondents—under a beautiful new banner by legendary underground cartoonist Rick Altergott—are pooling their expertise to bring you the most wide-ranging daily collection of weird reading material anyone could ask for.
WEIRD UNIVERSE will feature Chuck Shepherd’s daily feed on the most oddball news items of recent vintage. Regular posts such as “Follies of the Mad Men”—a history of Madison Avenue’s more dubious achievements—will alternate with lists, historical oddities, commentary and speculation. Together, the mix will cover every aspect of a human and natural cosmos that is not only “stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine.”
We believe in the power of the weird.
To entertain, to elucidate, to edify. To humble, to horrify, to honor. To shock, to surprise, to scandalize.
Most vitally, we believe in the power of the weird as the final frontier of gloriously untameable human nature. In a world that grows increasingly homogenous, regimented, authoritarian, timid and fearful, the weird stands as humanity’s last best hope for spontaneity, ingenuity, bravery, goofiness, laughter, astonishment, and crazy wisdom.
We believe in the power of the weird.
Visit WEIRD UNIVERSE, and you will too!
For more information, contact any or all of the participants:
Alex Boese
Paul Di Filippo
Chuck Shepherd
LIST OF LINKS
SITES
http://weirduniverse.net/
http://museumofhoaxes.com/
http://community.livejournal.com/theinferior4/
http://www.newsoftheweird.com/
http://www.rickaltergott.com/
EMAIL ADDRESSES
alex@museumofhoaxes.com
pgdf@cox.net
WeirdNews@earthlink.net
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danielmc
 | 04:33 pm - YOINKED and spreading the word!
Slavic Soul Party (http://www.myspace.com/slavicsoulparty playing for free
3rd Street Park in Bloomington
Friday night at 7 pm.
Check it out if you like Balkan Beat Box, gypsies, Fanfare Ciocarlia, marching bands, balkan brass, awesomeness, New Orleans jazz, or all of the above.
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eclectician
 | 04:55 pm
As the temperature approaches absolute zero, all activity ceases, even on a molecular level.
Apparently, the same effect can be achieved as the temperature approaches 95F on a Boston summer day.
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wilwheaton
| 02:37 pm - wil's tuesday link-o-rama
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/wwdn/~3/330094878/wils-tuesday-li.html As part of my continuing plot to convince you all to read my Propeller submissions, I present a few of my favorite stories from the last couple of days:
The dying art of the knuckleball
In the Red Sox clubhouse a few hours before the start of a drizzly, early-May game against the Rays, Tim Wakefield wraps his hand around a brand-new baseball and models his knuckleball grip. On television, Wakefield's grip appears claw-like and uncomfortable, but up close, it looks effortless...
Okay, first of all, when did the Devil Rays become the Rays? Did it happen because some crazy fundies got all worked up? I'm laying 3:2 that they did.
My enthusiasm for baseball -- actually, in all professional sports that aren't hockey or soccer -- has cratered in the last couple of years, but I still love to watch a knuckleballer confound a batter. It's a dying art , like pitchers who can last more than 5 innings.
Librarian carrying "McCain=Bush" sign kicked out of McCain event
In McCain's *open to the public* townhall meeting, a 61 year-old woman was cited for trespassing on orders from the McCain security detail for carrying a sign that read "McCain=Bush." Carol Kreck received a ticket and her court date is set for July 23.
That the event this woman was removed from was a public event, and she didn't do anything more disruptive than hold up a sign. "All I did was carry a sign that said McCain = Bush," Kreck said. "And for everyone who voted for Bush, I don't see why it's offensive to say McCain = Bush." Well, McCain is running for Bush's third term.
Book review: It's All Too Much
It's All Too Much is a terrific book that inverts the typical approach to dealing with existential kipple. Rather than helping you find new places and novel ways to "organize" all your crap, author Peter Walsh encourages you to explore why you ever kept all that junk in the first place.
Some friends of ours have my dream house: it's got beautiful hardwood floors, it's uncluttered, and they can park both of their cars in their garage. My whole life, I've had a problem with holding onto things (real and imagined) so this book looked super interesting to me, not because I need it (I know that I just need to get rid of my shit) but because it tells me that I'm not the only one with this problem.
HOWTO: build anti-paparazzi sunglasses
Hackaday posts plans to build some simple but effective anti-paparazzi sunglasses. They work by mounting two small infrared lights on the front. The wearer is completely inconspicuous to the human eye, but cameras only see a big white blur where your face should be.
I had to deal with paparazzi in that "really fucks with your ability to live your life" way for about two months when I was a teenager. I quickly figured out that if I avoided certain places and certain people, I could also avoid the cameras. But this project is interesting to me because we live in a world where our fucktard leaders are increasingly shoving their faces into every aspect of our personal and private lives, so any effort to say NOT YOURS is pretty important to me.
Bacon mania!
Why are Americans so batty for bacon? It's delicious, it's decadent -- and it's also a fashion statement.
I'm a vegetarian, so bacon as food is irrelevant to me. However, bacon as a cultural phenomenon? That's something else entirely. Something crispy and delicious!
The History of the Chaos Computer Club
With causes like ensuring secure voting machines, protecting privacy, defeating censorship and governmental obfuscation, and promoting hacker ethics, the CCC has become something of a hacktivist powerhouse. They hold an annual "Chaos Communications Congress" gathering and also a very cool hacker camp every four years.
If you're intrigued by this article, I highly recommend reading The Hacker Crackdown, The Cuckoo's Egg, and Cyberpunk (which has nothing to do with actual Cyberpunk).
Book Review: Dungeons and Desktops
Dungeons and Desktops chronicles the rise and fall of the Computer RPG industry, from Akalabeth to Zelda. While the bulk of the book is devoted to the genre's 'Golden Age' in the late '80s and early '90s, author Matt Barton explores the entire history of CRPGs, from their origins in the mid '70s to the very recent past.
I've written a lot of articles about video games, and my love of classic gaming is well known. But I don't know if I've ever pointed out just how much I love computer RPGS. From the Infocom games of my childhood to early Mac games like Uninvited and DejaVu to Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment, to Bioshock, the RPGS are my absolute favorites. This book seems really, really awesome. (And really, really expensive, unfortunately.)
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yhlee
 | 01:03 pm - Beach! + Music + Webreadings.
July 5: ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) yuneicorn wanted to go to the beach, and the lizard had never been, and it had been a few years for Joe and me, so we all drove down to Santa Monica. The water was pleasantly bracing in contrast to the heat of the sun, and the waves came in with force! I had somehow envisioned SoCal to have tranquil seas but I realize now that if it's known for surfers, well, you need waves to surf on. :-D The lizard adored the experience: she clung to Joe and shrieked in glee as the water all but knocked her over. I went in for a little while, then joined yuneicorn on the beach and finished reading Signal to Noise, then napped in the sun. So now I have a slight tan. ^_^ (Well, beyond the slight tan I had from Being in SoCal.)
Music: Remind me not to complain about having perfect pitch! I have discovered that when editing MIDI in Piano Roll mode in Logic, perfect pitch makes it almost trivial to identify the offending extra/missed notes and delete/change them. This is good, because my piano playing of a piece that has existed for a Very Short Time is inevitably going to be kinda ragged. I looooooove being able to edit notes, love love loooooooove. You might ask: why don't I just enter everything in Score Editor and then the tempo, etc. will be perfect? Mainly because the result lacks soul; it's easier for me to play-and-record the piece so that the velocity data comes in in a naturalistic way, and then to edit individual notes, than it is to enter the whole thing and then edit velocity on every freaking note in a way that sounds like an actual pianist, if that makes any sense.
( Webreadings: writing, books, miscellany. )
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winterspeakfeed
| 10:31 am - Sprint's travails
http://www.winterspeak.com/2008/07/sprints-travails.html Maybe you've seen the ads as Sprint's new CEO, Daniel Hess, talks about how the cell carrier is improving it's service. At any rate, somehow Sprint's customer service woes have made the NYTimes (never a good thing). I actually know a fair amount about Sprint's customer service woes back in 2004, and I'm guessing they have not changed that much. The article fails to communicate they key elements to understand about customer service in general, and certainly at Sprint.
1) Customer service reveals problems elsewhere in the company.
If you're getting a lot of complaints, or the complaints are not being resolved quickly, it points to something being broken elsewhere in the company. Maybe you have an activation process that people don't understand, or maybe you have a product that's simply too broken, or too complicated, to exist without high support costs. Either way, lots of the problems in the call center were being created by broken products and services elsewhere, and getting different parts of a company to work together is very difficult.
2) Focus on the basics.
People leave their cell carriers because they are unhappy with poor coverage, poor network availability, and poor call quality. While Sprint originally ran on its call quality (the "all digital" pin drop campaign) it's network coverage was lousy and it lost on that basic battle to Verizon, even though Verizon is more expensive and has worse phones. Actually, I think the iPhone is the first device that has actually driven consumer switching, which shows how remarkable it is.
3) Quality is free.
Every time a call comes in it should generate two actions: 1) fix the problem in that one instance, 2) fix the problem forever. You do these things, and the cost of higher quality more than pays for itself in lower support costs, higher customer satisfaction etc. Embracing this is a leap of faith though, and either leadership has the quality religion, or it does not.
4) Management matters.
Nextel was the smartest cell phone carrier. They were the only one who had carved out a niche, who has a position of strategic competitive advantage, and they dominated that. The customers were unique, their market was unique, and their financials were unique. The final, smart move that that smart cell phone company did was to sell itself to Sprint for $. Sprint did not get value from that deal, and I don't see how it could have. Another bad move by bad management.
5) Sometimes things just don't work.
Sprint's fair and flexible plan really was fantastic. It would be my recommended plan choice for most people, as it accurately deals with the problem of underestimated usage volatility (and the customer pain point of usurious overage). But it just didn't seem to take off. Sigh.
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