All entries written in October, 2009
October 30, 2009 at 9:05 am · Filed under Personal, Reviews, Thoughts
Just as autumn has always been my favorite season, Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. There’s something alluring (not to say attractive) about everyone getting into their costumes and throwing their inhibitions to the wind for one night a year. In my more timid days, Halloween was an excuse to ignore all social consequence, to be myself at any cost. Now, I no longer walk around with anything to hide, but Halloween still holds a certain thrill for me as a remembered portal to liberation. The chilly wind, the crunching leaves and the silver moonlight fill me with the phantom rush of past rebellion and forbidden possibility.
Keep reading….
October 25, 2009 at 2:16 pm · Filed under Misc, Personal, Thoughts
Am I the only one who didn’t know how incredibly fast mice are? My apartment’s mouse, who I’ve been seeing a lot lately, scurries at such a high speed that it took me two or three sightings to be sure that my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Last night did it, though–he popped out from under my bed when I came home from a bar, all plump and gray, and ran to wherever his hideout is. I first saw the mouse about a year ago, and at the time, I thought I’d plugged up all the gaps and cracks he could be using to enter the apartment; I didn’t see him again until very recently. I’m mystified as to why he’s chosen to return only now, and I’m still trying to figure out how he’s pulling it off. I’ve named him Bradley, after a friend of mine who is similarly inscrutable. There will be more updates on this situation as they become available.
The overwhelming reaction to my last post, from conversations online and in person, is that I should go ahead with switching to Gmail. But one friend told me something that gave me pause: she had been under the impression that Gmail claims ownership of all your e-mails, and she thought she remembered a big controversy over this a few years ago. An e-mail service that takes a copyright stake in your writing? That would be worse than Hotmail, especially for a writer like me, who self-publishes partly to protect his rights and control. But I haven’t been able to find anything proving her story one way or the other so far, so I ask whoever may be reading this: what have you heard?
About a week ago, I added an “ad” space at the top of this page, to feature certain important School Kids SG things. It fits perfectly on the line I set up for it, to the pixel, in Firefox, but apparently it goes onto two lines in IE. I really hate IE–it forces me to take things that look wonderful in my preferred browser and make them different (or just more bland) in order to protect my audience from its weaker capabilities. I just want to take this opportunity to reiterate that if anyone sees anything strange on this site at any time, in any browser, they should leave a comment or send me an e-mail. I do the best quality control I can, but I’m only one man, with one computer and one browser.
October 23, 2009 at 9:00 am · Filed under Misc, Personal, Reviews, Thoughts
The following is part reportage, part public service announcement.
A few years ago, when Hotmail took the ability to sync with Outlook Express, a previously-free feature, and moved it into their premium feature set, I almost got mad enough to cancel my account. There’s something profoundly unfriendly about charging for an option that was previously free, especially one that seems like it could benefit Hotmail by freeing up space on their servers. But I never quite pulled the trigger because so many people and sites had my Hotmail address on file–it was too much of a hassle to change everything over, and it wasn’t like the account didn’t still work.
That argument lost all its power the first time I saw error #151.
Keep reading….
October 16, 2009 at 9:05 am · Filed under On SKSG, Thoughts
Yeah, right. I’ve barely gotten through releasing The Arc of Time yet (I recently read an interview with an author who described book releases as incremental rather than instantaneous, and I completely agree). Book four won’t even be close to coming out for some time, at least a year.
That doesn’t mean I’m not working on it, though. In fact, I’ve been working on it all this week. That would make the nascent book four the natural thing to talk about in this post, but of course I don’t want to be giving away details this early, when I’m still in the midst of the actual writing.
As a compromise, I present this image, which is associated with book four. I’ll leave it up to you to guess how. Click for the large version.
October 12, 2009 at 7:49 pm · Filed under Misc, Thoughts
I’m getting tired of deleting thinly-veiled porn. And while I’m on the subject–all the makers of spam e-mail and comments would have to do is create and/or learn one coherent English line to be 100% more effective. Not that I want them to be more effective, mind you, but a job poorly done just grates on me.
October 11, 2009 at 10:48 am · Filed under Misc, Thoughts
Man, how did I almost miss Maureen Dowd’s hilarious review of The Lost Symbol? I didn’t even know she did book reviews! I enjoy her opinion columns sometimes.
Disclaimer: I haven’t actually read The Lost Symbol, and as of right now, I don’t really have any plans to. Not a sleight to Dan Brown–I don’t know enough about him to render an opinion one way or the other–but his books have just never struck me as my type of thing. I link to this page only because it relates to a sometimes-hobby of mine: reading bad reviews. They’re funny. Roger Ebert is a particular favorite of mine in this regard.
October 9, 2009 at 10:43 pm · Filed under Misc, Thoughts
Yeah, apparently someone at the New York Times didn’t realize the humor of the concepts they were juxtaposing. Or perhaps I should say the humor in the juxtaposition.
October 9, 2009 at 9:01 am · Filed under Reviews, Thoughts
My sister will be sure to appreciate this. Over the last 6-8 months, I’ve been playing through most of the Ace Attorney series for the Nintendo DS–if you know video games at all, you’ve almost certainly seen these games on store shelves at one time or another. Centering around the lead/title character, Phoenix Wright, they present adventure-game-ish interactive stories that are part crime scene investigation and part courtroom drama. One of my oldest friends had recommended the series to me several years ago, but even once I had the money, I actually held off on checking it out for a while because of my aforementioned sister, whose otaku mania for Phoenix and the other characters straddles the line between cute and intensely off-putting. I didn’t want to give her another excuse to send me Phoenix-Wright-themed gay porn.
Eventually, though, I was persuaded to try the first of the four (soon to be five) Ace Attorney games. While I was generally disappointed that the court proceedings weren’t more realistic–there are several times when you actually have to give the wrong answer to one of the logic puzzles just so the ghost of your deceased friend can answer for you–I’ve found the series to be so engaging that I’ve completed three of the games already. Here’s what I thought of them.
Keep reading….
October 2, 2009 at 9:07 am · Filed under Personal, Thoughts
Welp, another week has gone by without me spontaneously thinking up something to write here. Apparently, my life has gotten very boring! I did, however, see a very thought-provoking play last night (one which I recommend). That aside, the fact remains that these regular Friday posts are an interesting exercise for me not because I always have something to say naturally, but because they force me to reach in new directions or plumb my archives for surprising content. It keeps me on my toes.
So, today. I almost never share these, but every once in a while, I make myself a mix CD (or, in terms of my iPod, a playlist). They’re usually comprised of songs that map to a specific period in time, either because I heard them somewhere incidental, because I became attached to them through a significant experience, or, on occasion, because I randomly remembered them from long ago, but in a new context. Each playlist, when taken as a whole, tells a story about one part of my life, and, sometimes, a specific thing or set of things that happened to me at the time I was creating the playlist.
Some of my chosen songs are only in the group to be skipped over. Some had to grow on me. Some were favorites right from the start, and some have different meanings each time I hear them. See if you can figure out which songs serve which of these purposes in the following playlist, my most recent one. For best results, recreate the playlist yourself, if you have or can find all the songs.
Keep reading….
