Hi! If you’ve popped over here because of Apathetic Flesh at Pseudopod, welcome! If not, welcome, too! Please make yourself at home.
Also, if you’re here because of Pseudopod, you’ve helped out Escape Artists in their time of need, right? Please do. Otherwise you might not be able to listen to their stories for very much longer.
Griffin says, “Become a subscriber to Escape Artists!”
I narrated another story for Pseudopod and it’s up today. Go have a listen at its website.
Apathetic Flesh was written by Darren O. Godfrey and is a disturbing take on ennui.
Or at least, National Novel Writing Month is in the wrong month.
I tweeted this statement earlier today:
I think NaNoWriMo is silly (because of the month, not the concept) but who is participating?
— Bill Ruhsam (@bruhsam) October 30, 2013
I fully support the basic concept of NaNoWriMo which is to just bang out 50,000 words in 30 days, however November is a terrible month to do it. It’s like you’re being set up to fail. First off, it’s only 30 days. That extra 1 day in October or March would be nice. Last off, it’s got a crazy family nut-job holiday smack at the end, right where any god-fearing procrastinator is going to be trying to make up the lost numbers of words he or she needs to get to the 50,000. It’s all well and good to set up a daily word-count goal, but I think people forget that Thanksgiving and the days around it might be a total write-off (Ha! Get it?) when it comes to productivity. Sure, you might manage to get in your writing, and if so, good for you, but then again, you might not. Better figure that into your planning.
If I were doing this, I’d probably be thinking along these lines:
Thirty days minus three weekends, minus Thanksgiving, minus random days during the week when I want to watch TV, carry the two equals…
Eighteen Days.
I think that if I were dedicated, I might manage to peel off some time and accomplish a word-count goal in 18 out of 30 days. That’s 2,777.77 words per writing day. A much more reasonable goal than 1,666.66 which is what you’d have if you divided 50,000 words by 30 days. If you try and make 2,800 words per day, you’ll kill this 50,000 words by the end of the month.
Again, October or March would have been much better choices. They’re thirty-one days long, they don’t have big holidays smack in the middle, and they especially aren’t leading up to the crazy holiday season which just increases a lot of people’s stress anyway, no matter what else your goals are.
And that is my official opinion! I welcome discussion and people telling me I’m full of crap.
I am a fan of speculative fiction. Most of what I read falls under that umbrella, which includes science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, post-apocalyptic, dystopian, and others. Science fiction is one of my mainstays, and alternate history is another. I learned about the alternate history ((I’m sure a more literary-minded academic could answer this, but what’s the difference between “alternate history” and “fiction” once time has gone by? For example, while Alas Babylon falls firmly into the apocalyptic category of novels, couldn’t it be considered alternate history?)) genre by reading Harry Turtledove’s WWII series of novels, and took off from there.
One of the recent prime examples of alternate history fiction is the 1632 Series written, co-written, and edited by Eric Flint. Mr. Flint started with the fantastical assumption that a small town in West Virginia (based on the real-life town of Mannington, WV) was transported through space and time to Thuringia, Germany, in 1631. That’s in the middle of the 30 Years War, by the way. The stories depict and describe the political, military, cultural, medical, horticultural, sexual, and various other -al changes that occur due to this time/space transposition. I first read the book and its sequel in 2004 but never got into the short stories and anthologies that came along with it. Now, I’m starting over and reading the series through from end to end (in the recommended order).
To date there are five (?) main-line story novels, six other novels in the setting (but off to the side of the main action) and a gazillion stories and treatises about what happens when you stick a bunch of Americans into the Holy Roman Empire. However, (I mentioned that Eric Flint is a Co-Author and Editor of this series) one of the things that makes this series so interesting is the collaborative nature of the universe. No author, no matter how engaged and educated, can know or explore all the ramifications of an event like that supposed by the series. Instead, numerous people have contributed works detailing things such as the effect on the Lutheran church, and how you would go about setting up radio networks during the Maunder Minimum, and how the musicians of the day will be impacted by the sudden glut of musical knowledge brought by the 20th Century Americans. These stories aren’t just set in the same universe, they actively impact the mainline series by injecting events and characters.
In case you aren’t reading between the lines, I like this series. I recommend it.
PS: A huge recommendation from me: If you decide to read it, read it with Google Maps open next to you. Being able to place the events geographically as they’re occurring (and only a few places are fictional in these books) is a huge benefit.
Annie and Mike (left) were visiting from Massachusetts, so Jenn, me, Griffin, Jake and Jess went down to the Pride Parade. It was, as always, a colorful menagerie of people in all shapes and sizes. Watching the Pride Parade go by for two hours is an exercise in visual gymnastics and fun! I put some of the pictures up on Flickr, and others wait for me to do some edits.
As always, Midtown Bob was his own section.
It has been a busy few months, but I think things are settling back down into a routine. At least as routine as you can get with an infant around.
Firstly, and most importantly, we had a baby! Wow, that sure threw a wrench into the life-schedule that we had spent nine years putting together. Also, I changed jobs, kept fighting with my back issues, Jenn stayed home for eight weeks, and various other little things.
Now, Jenn’s back to work, Griffin has regular day care, I’m getting a regular paycheck again, and it looks like the country won’t get flushed down the toilet for political theater. I’d say we’re back on track, at least to maintain a routine that helps keep everything clicking along.
One piece of evidence of the problems that non-routine can bring me is that I keep losing stuff. For some reason (and this is all on me) I keep not putting things back where the belong! Most recently, the ear plugs I use for motorized yard work. Also, my social security card. Now, it’s the electrical tape. Of course, one of the lessons of this process is that it’s important to have routines and processes, even more so when everything is out of whack. You can fall back on those routines and be assured that you won’t be dropping any stitches (like paying your property tax. Got that in on the last day).
We’ll use the next few weeks on the lead-up to Thanksgiving to help lock in this new routine. I’m sure Griffin will throw some additional wrenches into the works, because he’s age 0, you know, but we’ll keep working to get the adults in the house back to a spot where we know what the hell we’re doing.
Speaking of Griffin. Have a picture.
Summary
The Escape Artists trio ((Escape Pod, Pseudopod, Podcastle)) of podcasts are in dire financial straits, and they’ve put out a call for help. You should help them.
Details
This call to arms is hitting at a coincidental time for me: it’s pledge week for the local NPR station. Usually, Jenn and I give around $100 to WABE each pledge drive, but this time, I think we’re going to opt out of the nice tax deduction and send it to Escape Pod instead. Why?
So please go help them out. If you listen to their metacast, you’ll hear endorsements from authors such as Cory Doctorow and Tim Pratt. Remember, the money you give them goes to supporting the servers and paying the authors. They’re making some noise about developing a model for paying beer-money to their narrators, but I can tell you that anything they might pay me for my narration ((Did I mention I’ve narrated for Podcastle and Pseudopod?)) I would turn around and give right back to them.
The subscription or one-time-payment buttons are on the front page of each podcast.
It’s easy. It’s fast.
Go. Help save an institution.
It was sleep-in Saturday around here.
The Amazon.com shopping screen filters have a missing item when searching for camera lenses: no “Prime” ((Also called “Fixed” although that can be confused with a fixed aperture)). You can’t search by prime lens. (i.e., those lenses that aren’t “zoom”.) Any lens that has only one focal length is a prime lens. Some prime lenses are also called “wide angle” and “fisheye” and “macro”, but they are prime only if they have a fixed focal length.
It’s interesting that you can’t filter in this fashion. I assume, knowing nothing really, that this is because no one has asked for it. This further leads me to assume that most people who search on Amazon for camera lenses are interested in zoom lenses, or macro lenses, or wide-angle lenses, and not in the bread-and-butter prime lenses. I will go even further out on my dangerous limb and conclude that the audience for this site primarily consists of people who don’t know much about the ins and outs of SLR lenses.
There. I’m being photo-elitist!
Actually, we can probably make the same assumption just based on numbers. A gazillion ((Source: my brain.)) cameras are sold every year, but there is a much smaller number ((Source: my butt)) of photographers who really get into the gear. An observation that only gear-heads and serious photogs buy the good prime lenses leads me to the conclusion that Amazon primarily sells zoom lenses and other “interesting” lenses, mainly.
Or, I could just be making this all up ((I am.)) and talking out of my butt.
Still, it’s an interesting omission from the filters.
Griffin had the opportunity to entertain two different grandmothers over the last several weeks. First we had Grandma Brooke who was here at the end of August, and then Grandma Ruhsam who was here just this past weekend.
I don’t seem to have put up any of Grandma Brooke’s visit on Flickr, so I can’t share those pictures yet, but here is my favorite picture from last weekend, with Grandma Ruhsam and Griffin.
20:47 Update! I’m an idiot. Yes, those pictures of Grandma Brooke were up on Flickr. Here’s the best.
