from a place of wrath and tears
toad porn on the kitchen floor
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Spring means the return of the fleas, and other things
Did some rewriting of DoCS this week, mostly adding/tweaking scenes I'd made notes about since last summer. Needed to really break in the netbook I bought a while back. About thirty percent of what was in the notebook (the pen and ink scribble scribble kind of notebook) was actually already in DoCS, which goes to show that I least remember some of the things I write*, and also that you do not actually need your notebook (the metal & plastic electrodigital kind) to revise a novel. Ha.
The reason I bought the netbook (ASUS eeepc) had more to do with the incompatibility of WinXP with Win7** networks*** than me needing a replacement. My trusted MSI Notebook might look like it's all duct tape and loose screws, but it still performs admirably for a well-traveled, all-banged-up "old" (about 6 years I think) notebook, but the batteries were simpering out again and those don't come cheap.
So: [ new batteries]+[win XP > 7 update]≈ [ASUS eeepc], et voilà.
So far it's turning out an okay thingie, though I still have some peeves I need to either overcome, kill, or learn to steer around.
It really freezes up Word a long time while saving, which isn't so bad when I decide when it saves. But 5 seconds is long when you're in the middle of an amazing sentence and the things starts autosaving. On the other hand, disabling the autosave is not an option for someone who writes.
I really miss the Numpad and dedicated keys like Home and End and Page Up. The limited space on the keyboard means they have been demoted to "function" keys (which makes me wonder whether it are only indjut writers like me who use them). Half the time I'm ending up at the start of the novel (ctrl+fn+home) when what I meant to do was select everything from cursor to beginning of the line (shift+fn+home), and I was drawing looks on the train yesterday while trying to select everything above the cursor right up to the start (a cat-spastic: shift+ctrl+fn+home) for deletion.
Something else I obviously did not give enough thought during the buying: arrows. On normal keyboards arrows reside in an upside-down T constellation (seriously, that was already the case in C64 days). On the eeepc they are reduced to the space of 3 keys in a row, with Up and Down being half-keys, conveniently placed underneath Shift. Imagine: you intend to go up a few lines, find yourself going down (not really a case of sausage fingers, but half of a tiny key is even tinier, okay?) and try to restore the error by tapping the correct key (obviously above the one you were), you end up tapping shift 3 times and wake up some annoying "helpful" key-shit proggie (Dorothy boobytraps I call those because they do sort of work like "click your heels three times" and before you know it you're standing in some field in Kansas and you did not want to go to Kansas at all, okay?). It means serious retraining of fingerspitzengefühl. Changing keys around like that, tch.
Nevertheless, today I did some more work on the second UTA novel, mostly plotting and choreographing, since it is going to be a complicated dance: I've got background stories about Conway's past, then 3 consecutive story arcs, and they all need to get mixed up and taken out of their chronological order and put into some phantaspasmodyllic roller coaster of a storyline. It's starting to look like doable, instead of "what the hell did you think when you thought up this mad scheme?"
Also bought some more books today, mostly because last week I was hit by a spell of friendly idiocy and allowing The Heroes to go with a friend since I was still finishing reading Loups-Garous which, of course, I finished within two days and since I'm not sure The Heroes will be back tomorrow... Mainly bought sequels: Jemisin's Broken Kingdoms (because I'm just so much in love with the woman's voice), Asher's Brass Man (because Line of Polity was not of the same level as Gridlinked, though the writing is good enough to give his agent Cormac another chance), Tchaikovsky's Dragonfly Falling (because even if Empire in Black and Gold didn't get me in an obsessive reading trance I could do with knowing how things evolve), and Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion, mainly because it got onto the to-buy list, and it still looked good, or even more so, in the flesh. Erm, paper. And in sticking links to titles I notice that I paid too much in Waterstones, and could even have had them delivered to my door for even less. The things you do to support your local bookstore...
*seriously, sometimes when I'm reacquainting myself with one of the books I wonder who has added a scene here and there. The wonders of writing in bits and pieces and hopping between stories I guess. That and writing on the train after work like a zombified meatpuppet.
** I'm not a total dweeb with computers, yet it has cost me some study to figure out how to KILL homegroups, but even then no talk between the dysfunctional family members. Besides, with MS every step forward is two steps back. Our USB printserver is also not compatible with Win7, and I refuse working with wireless [don't ask me why, perhaps part of Laumer's Long Twilight (yes, the one that ultimately led to a movie called Highlander) planted a seed in my brain about stuff being beamed through the air, and Walter Jon Williams' Metropolitan probably didn't help either] so currently I email my hubby the shit that needs printing, but hubby don't print because he is a lousy secretary. Good thing I'm not his employer because he would be so fired.
*** the mobile writing desk gets to link and update often to the immobile one, as back up as well as making sure all versions are the same. NB: I bought a GoodSync licence for that and it's still one of my most beloved programs ever.°
° talking about helpful proggies: about two months ago I managed to get confused about whether I had updated the shit, and had 2 different versions of a document. Not something you want to happen when you're talking about 100K+ text, and not quite knowing *what* had been changed between the two. Snagged a program called Diff Doc from the web which was great help, though working through such a shitload of words was still painstaking and long.
The reason I bought the netbook (ASUS eeepc) had more to do with the incompatibility of WinXP with Win7** networks*** than me needing a replacement. My trusted MSI Notebook might look like it's all duct tape and loose screws, but it still performs admirably for a well-traveled, all-banged-up "old" (about 6 years I think) notebook, but the batteries were simpering out again and those don't come cheap.
So: [ new batteries]+[win XP > 7 update]≈ [ASUS eeepc], et voilà.
So far it's turning out an okay thingie, though I still have some peeves I need to either overcome, kill, or learn to steer around.
It really freezes up Word a long time while saving, which isn't so bad when I decide when it saves. But 5 seconds is long when you're in the middle of an amazing sentence and the things starts autosaving. On the other hand, disabling the autosave is not an option for someone who writes.
I really miss the Numpad and dedicated keys like Home and End and Page Up. The limited space on the keyboard means they have been demoted to "function" keys (which makes me wonder whether it are only indjut writers like me who use them). Half the time I'm ending up at the start of the novel (ctrl+fn+home) when what I meant to do was select everything from cursor to beginning of the line (shift+fn+home), and I was drawing looks on the train yesterday while trying to select everything above the cursor right up to the start (a cat-spastic: shift+ctrl+fn+home) for deletion.
Something else I obviously did not give enough thought during the buying: arrows. On normal keyboards arrows reside in an upside-down T constellation (seriously, that was already the case in C64 days). On the eeepc they are reduced to the space of 3 keys in a row, with Up and Down being half-keys, conveniently placed underneath Shift. Imagine: you intend to go up a few lines, find yourself going down (not really a case of sausage fingers, but half of a tiny key is even tinier, okay?) and try to restore the error by tapping the correct key (obviously above the one you were), you end up tapping shift 3 times and wake up some annoying "helpful" key-shit proggie (Dorothy boobytraps I call those because they do sort of work like "click your heels three times" and before you know it you're standing in some field in Kansas and you did not want to go to Kansas at all, okay?). It means serious retraining of fingerspitzengefühl. Changing keys around like that, tch.
Nevertheless, today I did some more work on the second UTA novel, mostly plotting and choreographing, since it is going to be a complicated dance: I've got background stories about Conway's past, then 3 consecutive story arcs, and they all need to get mixed up and taken out of their chronological order and put into some phantaspasmodyllic roller coaster of a storyline. It's starting to look like doable, instead of "what the hell did you think when you thought up this mad scheme?"
Also bought some more books today, mostly because last week I was hit by a spell of friendly idiocy and allowing The Heroes to go with a friend since I was still finishing reading Loups-Garous which, of course, I finished within two days and since I'm not sure The Heroes will be back tomorrow... Mainly bought sequels: Jemisin's Broken Kingdoms (because I'm just so much in love with the woman's voice), Asher's Brass Man (because Line of Polity was not of the same level as Gridlinked, though the writing is good enough to give his agent Cormac another chance), Tchaikovsky's Dragonfly Falling (because even if Empire in Black and Gold didn't get me in an obsessive reading trance I could do with knowing how things evolve), and Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion, mainly because it got onto the to-buy list, and it still looked good, or even more so, in the flesh. Erm, paper. And in sticking links to titles I notice that I paid too much in Waterstones, and could even have had them delivered to my door for even less. The things you do to support your local bookstore...
*seriously, sometimes when I'm reacquainting myself with one of the books I wonder who has added a scene here and there. The wonders of writing in bits and pieces and hopping between stories I guess. That and writing on the train after work like a zombified meatpuppet.
** I'm not a total dweeb with computers, yet it has cost me some study to figure out how to KILL homegroups, but even then no talk between the dysfunctional family members. Besides, with MS every step forward is two steps back. Our USB printserver is also not compatible with Win7, and I refuse working with wireless [don't ask me why, perhaps part of Laumer's Long Twilight (yes, the one that ultimately led to a movie called Highlander) planted a seed in my brain about stuff being beamed through the air, and Walter Jon Williams' Metropolitan probably didn't help either] so currently I email my hubby the shit that needs printing, but hubby don't print because he is a lousy secretary. Good thing I'm not his employer because he would be so fired.
*** the mobile writing desk gets to link and update often to the immobile one, as back up as well as making sure all versions are the same. NB: I bought a GoodSync licence for that and it's still one of my most beloved programs ever.°
° talking about helpful proggies: about two months ago I managed to get confused about whether I had updated the shit, and had 2 different versions of a document. Not something you want to happen when you're talking about 100K+ text, and not quite knowing *what* had been changed between the two. Snagged a program called Diff Doc from the web which was great help, though working through such a shitload of words was still painstaking and long.
Roller-coaster
Sometimes life is like a bucking bull. And no amount of clinging on is going to make him change his mind about throwing you.
So, today I figured out that trying to deal with old men, as they play at immovable object in a board, is pretty much like dealing with prissy bitches back in my catholic high-school days: what's important is not the work that needs doing and whether it gets done, but the holy sanctity of the pecking order. Everything is a popularity contest, and I never won those way back when, and I don't see why that would change now.
I really can't summon the energy to deal with grown people on that level anymore. So I'm getting off this crazy bull's back and look at things of neglect that are staring sadly at me with lopsided grins from the corner of the arena. Spring's in the air, after all, and I've got plenty of trees in my garden that need killing...
So, today I figured out that trying to deal with old men, as they play at immovable object in a board, is pretty much like dealing with prissy bitches back in my catholic high-school days: what's important is not the work that needs doing and whether it gets done, but the holy sanctity of the pecking order. Everything is a popularity contest, and I never won those way back when, and I don't see why that would change now.
I really can't summon the energy to deal with grown people on that level anymore. So I'm getting off this crazy bull's back and look at things of neglect that are staring sadly at me with lopsided grins from the corner of the arena. Spring's in the air, after all, and I've got plenty of trees in my garden that need killing...
21 days
21 days later
I've got this ear infection bug pretty much conquered, no matter the allies it brought along (renewed sinusitis, flu and the common cold as finalizer).
In between the reading and sleeping and dragging myself through the days, I've managed to renew my efforts on the Barynn Companion. Some while ago I had decided on the form (geographical data, with history, biology and whatnot attached), and now I'm about half-way with gathering all the bits of data from my notes, digital or ink&paper, and integrating and checking all that into a single document. What makes this job huge is not the amount of data but the alertness I must display for typos (since part of the job consists of rebuilding the dictionaries for the spellchecker) and misidentifications (which was one of the main reasons to have a Companion). While I'm happy of the progress, I must admit that the pure administrative side of the job is terrible boring. Poke-yourself-in-the-eye boring.
Meanwhile ideas flit in and out the dark recesses where the Cow Watcher watches the Dungeon-Crawlers, throwing helpful hints in my face that will help delete over 20 pages from Barynn 1 while I'm dead-set on not working any further on any Barynn until the Companion is finished. Scritchyscratch with the pen in the little notebook and hope I remember to check my new set of notes before I start editing.
Belgium, the inventors of redundancy in politics.
And while all this happens, Belgium is still the political faerieland it was, with nothing moving, nothing changing, politicians trying to put the holy fear of bankruptcy in our hearts (to gloss over the fact they stockpiled debts to bail out banks that are now back to their regular business of golden handshakes instead of helping the small and medium business survive), and the people being mostly to busy calling each other rotten fish on facebook and other online media instead of thinking before they speak, and picking up the good ol' pitchfork and show them idjuts what democracy means.
I've got this ear infection bug pretty much conquered, no matter the allies it brought along (renewed sinusitis, flu and the common cold as finalizer).
In between the reading and sleeping and dragging myself through the days, I've managed to renew my efforts on the Barynn Companion. Some while ago I had decided on the form (geographical data, with history, biology and whatnot attached), and now I'm about half-way with gathering all the bits of data from my notes, digital or ink&paper, and integrating and checking all that into a single document. What makes this job huge is not the amount of data but the alertness I must display for typos (since part of the job consists of rebuilding the dictionaries for the spellchecker) and misidentifications (which was one of the main reasons to have a Companion). While I'm happy of the progress, I must admit that the pure administrative side of the job is terrible boring. Poke-yourself-in-the-eye boring.
Meanwhile ideas flit in and out the dark recesses where the Cow Watcher watches the Dungeon-Crawlers, throwing helpful hints in my face that will help delete over 20 pages from Barynn 1 while I'm dead-set on not working any further on any Barynn until the Companion is finished. Scritchyscratch with the pen in the little notebook and hope I remember to check my new set of notes before I start editing.
Belgium, the inventors of redundancy in politics.
And while all this happens, Belgium is still the political faerieland it was, with nothing moving, nothing changing, politicians trying to put the holy fear of bankruptcy in our hearts (to gloss over the fact they stockpiled debts to bail out banks that are now back to their regular business of golden handshakes instead of helping the small and medium business survive), and the people being mostly to busy calling each other rotten fish on facebook and other online media instead of thinking before they speak, and picking up the good ol' pitchfork and show them idjuts what democracy means.
otitis
some of the bugs that were playing hide and seek between larynx and sinus decided to make a last stand in my ear. as a kid, ear infections weren't my thing, I did tonsillitis and larnygitis in all forms and colors.
how better to start the year than with a brand new experience!
how better to start the year than with a brand new experience!
nameless child (sonogram)
Been reading up on stuff (1000+ posts that need sorting out in my demonfeeder), and upon flipping through Whatever came upon a post interesting enough to want to click through to the comment (this post which is a blog-to-blog discussion), Cow Watcher snatched a thought here:
See how that works, where with all the crossing and linking possible, between computers, information, platforms, programs, whatever, in the end the thing that is our master remains time. No matter what we invent to help us link, we remain linear creatures and must make linear decisions. Will there come a day where we can develop split personalities for every moment we have to spin off our digital self into old parts of the digital world, or will we develop a sense, a social ritual or handshake to indicate we're visitors from the future and that at the same time allows us to instalink to it. A rollerdex of spinoff blips or something. Am I making sense? I don't mean developing some sort of digital agent to do the job for us (because it's a SF idea and besides I'm already using that idea). Usually, when we humans change the world (as the abstract place the world is after processing by our brain), it's by using old tools. Tools we know, inside and out, and use on new problems. In the same way the first ever smiley (click for archeological reference) changed the language we use to communicate, turning us into embryonic Bester* machines.
Anyways, sense or not digiblips, into the New Project container it goes with other thoughts on digiblippery and networking. Note to self: the baby still needs a name.
On the topic of instalinking and moving from one world/workspace/headspace to the next, my mind finds tabs mightily difficult to sort out the last few days. It happens once in a while, and I don't know how to fix it. At work I was totally lost between the running programs/groups in the taskbar and Excel tabs, always flipping the wrong things to the surface. It's not even a "clickspaces being in the same area" thing, since the Firefox tabs are currently also annoying the crap out of my digital-spatial senses. Like working in a cramped office on a cluttered desk. It only exists in digispace and yet it is so cluttered I can never seem to find the right piece of paper and I'm muttering to myself about "where did I see/put that thing?".
Why is my mind so confused? Is it working on stuff and not communicating, or is it the yello-boogers' influence (sinusitis yay!)?
* I don't mean something made by Bester Machine Enterprise Co.,Lt from Japan, which makes "printers machinery for cup noodles, ice cream, pudding etc." whatever that actually might be. What I meant was actually the way in which reading Bester (specifically Golem100) teaches your mind to think differently about the tools we use to express language, the ink on paper, the characters defined after centuries of convention. And suddenly a semi-colon is not just punctuation but a reduced image of a set of winking eyes, and math and language are not so different...
#23 by Doc Rocketscience on December 29, 2010 - 1:22 pmJohn, as a result of this I just read the original post from 2006 for the first time. I have some questions. I note that comments are still open there.Would you prefer that I contribute to that (albeit quite dusty) discussion, or this?
#24 by John Scalzi on December 29, 2010 - 1:23 pmEither is fine but if you want people interested in that particular essay to see them, it’s probably better to put them there rather than here.
See how that works, where with all the crossing and linking possible, between computers, information, platforms, programs, whatever, in the end the thing that is our master remains time. No matter what we invent to help us link, we remain linear creatures and must make linear decisions. Will there come a day where we can develop split personalities for every moment we have to spin off our digital self into old parts of the digital world, or will we develop a sense, a social ritual or handshake to indicate we're visitors from the future and that at the same time allows us to instalink to it. A rollerdex of spinoff blips or something. Am I making sense? I don't mean developing some sort of digital agent to do the job for us (because it's a SF idea and besides I'm already using that idea). Usually, when we humans change the world (as the abstract place the world is after processing by our brain), it's by using old tools. Tools we know, inside and out, and use on new problems. In the same way the first ever smiley (click for archeological reference) changed the language we use to communicate, turning us into embryonic Bester* machines.
Anyways, sense or not digiblips, into the New Project container it goes with other thoughts on digiblippery and networking. Note to self: the baby still needs a name.
On the topic of instalinking and moving from one world/workspace/headspace to the next, my mind finds tabs mightily difficult to sort out the last few days. It happens once in a while, and I don't know how to fix it. At work I was totally lost between the running programs/groups in the taskbar and Excel tabs, always flipping the wrong things to the surface. It's not even a "clickspaces being in the same area" thing, since the Firefox tabs are currently also annoying the crap out of my digital-spatial senses. Like working in a cramped office on a cluttered desk. It only exists in digispace and yet it is so cluttered I can never seem to find the right piece of paper and I'm muttering to myself about "where did I see/put that thing?".
Why is my mind so confused? Is it working on stuff and not communicating, or is it the yello-boogers' influence (sinusitis yay!)?
* I don't mean something made by Bester Machine Enterprise Co.,Lt from Japan, which makes "printers machinery for cup noodles, ice cream, pudding etc." whatever that actually might be. What I meant was actually the way in which reading Bester (specifically Golem100) teaches your mind to think differently about the tools we use to express language, the ink on paper, the characters defined after centuries of convention. And suddenly a semi-colon is not just punctuation but a reduced image of a set of winking eyes, and math and language are not so different...
from Alfred Bester's Golem100
meep meep
haz work changes: roster will change to 3 days a week, since it's no use going for a half-time job and sitting the other half of my time on a train or in a station waiting for one. yay!
done some writing on train/lunch break. with pen and paper !gasp! and also a bit on laptop. editing Barynn 1 to make voice and shtuff fit with Barynn 2. this might be a never-ending-cycle, digiblips. thought about that while thinking of some ideas I had to fiddle a bit with Dreams of Cold Stone, and realized editors must be like cameras: it's only when the manuscript passes through their lenses that it becomes immutable, capturing the moment.
started Palmer's Version 43, stuttered. He does annoying characters a bit too well.
picked up Abraham's 2nd omnibus Season of War and breezed through that instead. hooked hubby on Stross, hubby went out and bought all the Stross he could find. now I need a ladder to tackle my to-be-read pile. methinks whenever vampire/Moscow nights runs out of steam, there will be Laundry universe waiting.
hubby also bought all the Le Carré he could find for rereading. keeps telling me I really should read some. I eye the TBR pile and make non-committal noises, or mumble something about him really needing to finish the beta-reading of Tiger of Opal and trying not to sarcasnap about how Le Carré is the new Pynchon in the house.
it snowed. thawed a bit. snowed some more. and some more. making that going to work thing just that little bit more interesting.
some of the flux (not work) imploxidated all over the place. my head turned itself inside out and is now in a much better place. picked up Version 43 again. and finished. note-to-self: need to put a cnepur backup on laptop so I can prep the blog on train (or in station).
started Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief. like the story sofar though it took a while for the narrative to hold my attention, in spite of all the interesting new words, because you see, I don't like your similes, sir, no siree, don't like them at all.
meanwhile still no new government in Belgium:
done some writing on train/lunch break. with pen and paper !gasp! and also a bit on laptop. editing Barynn 1 to make voice and shtuff fit with Barynn 2. this might be a never-ending-cycle, digiblips. thought about that while thinking of some ideas I had to fiddle a bit with Dreams of Cold Stone, and realized editors must be like cameras: it's only when the manuscript passes through their lenses that it becomes immutable, capturing the moment.
started Palmer's Version 43, stuttered. He does annoying characters a bit too well.
picked up Abraham's 2nd omnibus Season of War and breezed through that instead. hooked hubby on Stross, hubby went out and bought all the Stross he could find. now I need a ladder to tackle my to-be-read pile. methinks whenever vampire/Moscow nights runs out of steam, there will be Laundry universe waiting.
hubby also bought all the Le Carré he could find for rereading. keeps telling me I really should read some. I eye the TBR pile and make non-committal noises, or mumble something about him really needing to finish the beta-reading of Tiger of Opal and trying not to sarcasnap about how Le Carré is the new Pynchon in the house.
it snowed. thawed a bit. snowed some more. and some more. making that going to work thing just that little bit more interesting.
some of the flux (not work) imploxidated all over the place. my head turned itself inside out and is now in a much better place. picked up Version 43 again. and finished. note-to-self: need to put a cnepur backup on laptop so I can prep the blog on train (or in station).
started Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief. like the story sofar though it took a while for the narrative to hold my attention, in spite of all the interesting new words, because you see, I don't like your similes, sir, no siree, don't like them at all.
meanwhile still no new government in Belgium:
- good point: apparently not having panicky egos at the helm helped to stabilize the economy, though they keep telling us that's a fluke, an illusion that won't hold until tomorrow, don't believe the hype pretty please
- good point: since the ship doesn't sink, it dawns on the sailors that maybe they don't really need that many captains, mm?
- bad point: during the slow but steady negotiations (they're talking about really big reforms, so give them time and space) it becomes more and more apparent that Europe is like a nirvana and all the serious, experienced politicians of this small but confusing country have transcended the last couple of years leaving only the idiots in this quagmire of communities, languages, and egos. we're left with the dregs, damnit
- bad point: some minor routine stuff running afoul, for instance the signatures needed to hand social institutes the money they've been alotted in budget need to come from areal/ full government. so some governmental social institutes had to loan money from real banks to pay the needy (at stellar rates of course, like as if society ever did something for the banks, innit just so?), meaning said institutes will have less to hand out to the needy, or need more of my tax euros than foreseen which I would be okay with if it wasn't simply to hand some more tax money to the banks. they've already got their fair share for the next century or so, I'd say.
