27 November, 2006
21 November, 2006
Again!
It happened again. Worth noting is one of the precepts given at the start of Accelerando:
Among other things. The linked document is worth reading. I find myself completely frustrated and stymied by this continually occurring phenom. Is it that I am being perceptive, or that the world is so predictable that everyone has these assumptions? The former seems arrogant, the latter seems wrong because day traders actually make a living (if it was true, everyone would have the knowledge or intuition they use to make money, therefore invalidating their approach).
It's enough to make me want to give up on the book, put it aside as something I'd like to write about, but I should dust it off later when I've had some time to reflect on it. That leaves me back at 0, instead of close to finishing.
I'm also not exactly dawdling with it. Between the last time this happened and today, I've made tremendous progress. Even if I'd finished in that period, the book would be in the middle of copyediting/edit-editing and I'd be equally screwed. Seems to me that I can't win this one.
Finally, expect one entirely new magical technology to come out of nowhere and sandbag everyone who wasn't watching the ball roughly every five years (1990's), three years (2000's), and then annually or faster (2010's).
Among other things. The linked document is worth reading. I find myself completely frustrated and stymied by this continually occurring phenom. Is it that I am being perceptive, or that the world is so predictable that everyone has these assumptions? The former seems arrogant, the latter seems wrong because day traders actually make a living (if it was true, everyone would have the knowledge or intuition they use to make money, therefore invalidating their approach).
It's enough to make me want to give up on the book, put it aside as something I'd like to write about, but I should dust it off later when I've had some time to reflect on it. That leaves me back at 0, instead of close to finishing.
I'm also not exactly dawdling with it. Between the last time this happened and today, I've made tremendous progress. Even if I'd finished in that period, the book would be in the middle of copyediting/edit-editing and I'd be equally screwed. Seems to me that I can't win this one.
20 November, 2006
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use List::Util qw/ shuffle /;
my @phrase = split //, qq/your text goes here/;
my @dict;
{ open F, "</usr/share/dict/words"; @dict = <F>; close F }
my %dhash = map { chomp $_; lc $_ => 1 } grep { length $_ < 18 } @dict;
print "starting run...\n";
ITERATOR: while (1) {
my @victim = shuffle @phrase;
my @words = split / /, join '', @victim;
foreach my $word (@words) {
next ITERATOR unless $dhash{ $word };
}
print +(join '', @victim).qq/\n/;
}
That is all. Comments welcome.
17 November, 2006
When bad people do bad things to unarmed people.
When I came home from work yesterday, I went into my bedroom to put my briefcase down, and set my things on the nightstand. I noticed there was a light in the bathroom, which I hadn't seen before. Odd. I walk into the bathroom and there is a flashlight -- which I have never seen before -- sitting on my counter. I think, wow, somebody broke into my apartment. And so I mention this to Sandy who is noticeably disturbed. I walk back down the hallway and I notice that my bathroom has holes in the wall which were cut with a sawzall or a jigsaw. These have been artfully covered up with cardboard and duct tape. Further, there's particle board and splinters all over the bathroom floor.
Wow. So somebody came into my apartment and attacked my walls? I guess maybe there was something wrong with my bathrooms...? But, I wasn't even home, and there's no water on the floor or anything. I go downstairs to the front desk, and ask what the problem is. They have all left for the day -- 15 minutes before closing -- and insist there was a leak in "Emcor", which is in fact on 23rd street (we live on Clark street). I inform them of this and they are unimpressed. Sandy and I go back upstairs and look for a note, which says "looked for a water leak" or somesuch. Our cat is missing. We look around for the cat and find her wedged behind the couch. I go check on the other cat (who does not get along with the former cat) and I notice yet more holes in the walls in that bedroom. Some of these have been covered with duct tape, some of them have not. There is drywall all over the floor. The cat is tweaked, as well as the other cat. Who wouldn't be? Cats and power tools?
I go downstairs and near lose it. I then apologize and I say, listen, I need to calm down, I am going to go have dinner. At dinner, we discuss what the plan is in regards to the apartment. The bottom line is, we both have to be at work in the morning. Since there are splinters all over the floor, we either spend three hours cleaning the house (which they will dirty again when they re-drywall the place) or we stay in a hotel. Hotel it is.
The next day, I inform my boss I will be out of the office. I go into the office, and say, "why don't you tell me what happened." The woman, whom I have never met, calls down the maintenance guys who tell me there was an emergency. However, when beer o'clock came by (that's seventeen hundred to the rest of you), they left, and left their tools in my house, cardboard on the walls affixed with duct tape, and even wide open holes. I tell them, listen, I stayed in a hotel last night, I would like to be reimbursed.
Now, they are telling me that they'll come by to re drywall the place next tuesday. "Our drywall guys are 'out of town' this weekend." Whatever the fuck that means. So I'm going to spend three hours cleaning. And last night I pushed out something like 7500 words (which is a tremendous clip), and I was coming home to polish off another 7500 words. So I've lost today's work with NOAA, today's work on my book, and yesterday's work on my book. Eight hours for NOAA, and two days of six hours for the additional work on the book. That's twenty hours, and I am still going to have to clean their shit up again next week.
Let me also make clear (and that I have to do this bothers me), that I have disclosed information for public record of the damage -- and only the damage -- done to my home, as I am entitled to under the VRLTA. The landlord, in this case, Charles E. Smith (a wholly owned subsidiary of Archstone-Smith, yada yada), is not permitted to make known anything about my home, as it is private. Should photos or documentation surface which deprives me of my privacy on matters which are not, and let me be clear -- public record -- I am entitled to seek damages. I say this because I am informed that Smith has pictures which apparently disprove this. Whatever that means.
The icing on this particular shitburger is the card they slid under my door listing their core values. The first thing listed is "honesty and ethics" (I couldn't make this up myself, folks, it's in the picture).
The set:
http://flickr.com/photos/avriette/sets/72157594380101624/
(this may be dodgy)
Direct links:
http://static.flickr.com/100
http://static.flickr.com/103
http://static.flickr.com/113
http://static.flickr.com/105
http://static.flickr.com/106
http://static.flickr.com/114
http://static.flickr.com/104
http://static.flickr.com/101
16 November, 2006
some days you get the bear...
So in a fit of productivity, I managed to pound out about 5,000 words today. Whenever I wind up putting that much down, I have to make sure it jives with the rest of the material. I kind of get caught up in the scene or sequence I'm writing, and sometimes I deviate a little bit.
Well, today I stepped back, and started from the beginning. Eek. I've been working on this for six or seven months, so it's sort of like peeling back the layers of a clove of garlic. Or whatever. Anyways, I realized that I've had several of these sequential "lots in one day" things, and they mostly go together. However, earlier this year, it was a much steadier pace, with lower per-day counts. So most of that stuff doesn't agree too well with the latter stuff (the first 20k doesn't really fit the following bit). So, a bunch of steps forward (and stuff I'm very pleased with), and I also have to go back and rip a bunch of stuff out. I think it may be time to Print The Manuscript.
Feer.
Well, today I stepped back, and started from the beginning. Eek. I've been working on this for six or seven months, so it's sort of like peeling back the layers of a clove of garlic. Or whatever. Anyways, I realized that I've had several of these sequential "lots in one day" things, and they mostly go together. However, earlier this year, it was a much steadier pace, with lower per-day counts. So most of that stuff doesn't agree too well with the latter stuff (the first 20k doesn't really fit the following bit). So, a bunch of steps forward (and stuff I'm very pleased with), and I also have to go back and rip a bunch of stuff out. I think it may be time to Print The Manuscript.
Feer.
fiddlesticks.
Anyone with a copy of The Da Vinci Code is cheerfully invited to send me an email. The paper version. And no, this is not as bad as it sounds. I promise.
15 November, 2006
plonk
About the Author
Captain James A. Hartmetx is the Eagle Vision Program Manager at
the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Integration System
Program Office, Electronic Systems Center, Hanscom Air Force Base,
Massachusetts. He is responsible for the planning and execution
of critical, multi- million dollar, congressional interested
commercial satellite imagery programs.
You know, I frankly don't understand how all this stuff winds up on the internet. Worth noting is the publication of this document is 2001. That the USAF is still playing with it as of Oct 2006. Somebody has written a master's thesis on the toy at JMIC (ostensibly, there is NRO involvement, as they are the documented origin of the program). Hanscom is still provisioning equipment for it.
The notion is, it can be used for military operations (it's common knowledge that we sift through everyone else's satellite data, and they sift through ours, that's how it works), but it's primarily employed for civil purposes. Banda Aceh (also noted in the theses mentioned above), firefighters, that sort of thing. However, it also mentions it can track objects in shipping langes greater than 25 meters (how useful is that? how big's a Slava?). Presumably, lots of them simultaneously due the altitude of these satellites (25,000 mi in some cases, lower for other birds, but it's the whole gamut, GOES to whatever keyhole^Wgoogle is using these days). Okay, so you could plan better shipping routes (see above).
But, uh, why does the NRO give two shits about any of that? I mean, this is a system that's employed by Army and Air Force intelligence people. They're not looking for people floating around off the coast of Indonesia. Would NRO spend the money to develop a novel system of collating various civil and military imaging sources into one place for situational awareness... of a burning building in Atlanta? The number of tuna boats who are oh-so-assuredly overfishing the bluefin population? I suspect that's not the case.
All in the name of research, mind you. For a work of fiction, you spooky people.
Perle has an arch nemesis.
Michael A. Ledeen may in fact be more of a hawk than Perle. I find that pretty astonishing.
I was slogging through the various AEI lectures, conferences, and so on, attempting to correlate pre-war efforts with the things I remembered, and so on (and yes, I'm going through Chomsky and other dove-ish people to make sure that this recollection isn't just "bomb the fuckers!"). They mostly line up. However, I am somewhat peeved at other authors (see that? I included myself in that group so subtly!) making such a stink about the Iraq war. Originally, I thought the whole thing was somewhat farcical. Sure, people are getting maimed, but there are plenty of people maiming themselves. If that's not comedy, I don't know what is. But when you try to have a serious thought or two about US foreign policy and where it's leading us, where militarization is taking us, you just can't ignore Iraq. Or, really, Afghanistan.
Anyways, I once said that Haldeman's Forever War was kind of silly. Here we have a science fiction book, a relatively short one, mind you, which is more or less a metaphor for the war in Viet Nam. Only throw in a bunch of relativistic time dilation and fancy descriptions of people walking around on Pluto. Eesh. My comment on the book (which most people consider to be sort of a seminal work in the SF corpus) was "nobody really wants to read a science fiction book about the Viet Nam war."
I mostly stick by this. And, so when I read Accelerando, or The Algebraist, or some of the other contemporary books which have come out by authors I appreciate, I always find myself biting back a little bit of disgust. Aw fuck, here I was trying to enjoy my soap opera, and I have to read some simpering tripe from somebody I would otherwise respect.
So, here I am, looking at a rather extensive section of dialogue, and I realize (oh, what arrogance!) that it's not unlike Dialogue, by Galileo. I find myself with two diametrically opposed characters -- each with rational views -- and I wonder how I'm going to find a mutual ground between them so I can move on. The topic, unfortunately is related to military doctrine and tactics. You can't have a modern conversation about doctrine and tactics without discussing the war in the middle east. And so I find myself doing precisely what Banks or Haldeman did. I'm offering criticism of the war, without really intending to. Because I don't want to write a book about Iraq. The book is a much simpler message than that. But, if you want to write a book about the sheer failure of logic and humanity, and you set this failure in the present (or near term) tense, you wind up discussing Iraq, the mujahedeen, and so on.
I'd share with you the quote that dislodged this particular frustration from the big old ivory tower I write in (Mr. Ledeen's, mind you), but that would indeed ruin some of the fun. It's nice when the dots do line up, and you can just execute everyone who stands in the way of the iron clad logic of some of these Chomsky and Perle types.
I was slogging through the various AEI lectures, conferences, and so on, attempting to correlate pre-war efforts with the things I remembered, and so on (and yes, I'm going through Chomsky and other dove-ish people to make sure that this recollection isn't just "bomb the fuckers!"). They mostly line up. However, I am somewhat peeved at other authors (see that? I included myself in that group so subtly!) making such a stink about the Iraq war. Originally, I thought the whole thing was somewhat farcical. Sure, people are getting maimed, but there are plenty of people maiming themselves. If that's not comedy, I don't know what is. But when you try to have a serious thought or two about US foreign policy and where it's leading us, where militarization is taking us, you just can't ignore Iraq. Or, really, Afghanistan.
Anyways, I once said that Haldeman's Forever War was kind of silly. Here we have a science fiction book, a relatively short one, mind you, which is more or less a metaphor for the war in Viet Nam. Only throw in a bunch of relativistic time dilation and fancy descriptions of people walking around on Pluto. Eesh. My comment on the book (which most people consider to be sort of a seminal work in the SF corpus) was "nobody really wants to read a science fiction book about the Viet Nam war."
I mostly stick by this. And, so when I read Accelerando, or The Algebraist, or some of the other contemporary books which have come out by authors I appreciate, I always find myself biting back a little bit of disgust. Aw fuck, here I was trying to enjoy my soap opera, and I have to read some simpering tripe from somebody I would otherwise respect.
So, here I am, looking at a rather extensive section of dialogue, and I realize (oh, what arrogance!) that it's not unlike Dialogue, by Galileo. I find myself with two diametrically opposed characters -- each with rational views -- and I wonder how I'm going to find a mutual ground between them so I can move on. The topic, unfortunately is related to military doctrine and tactics. You can't have a modern conversation about doctrine and tactics without discussing the war in the middle east. And so I find myself doing precisely what Banks or Haldeman did. I'm offering criticism of the war, without really intending to. Because I don't want to write a book about Iraq. The book is a much simpler message than that. But, if you want to write a book about the sheer failure of logic and humanity, and you set this failure in the present (or near term) tense, you wind up discussing Iraq, the mujahedeen, and so on.
I'd share with you the quote that dislodged this particular frustration from the big old ivory tower I write in (Mr. Ledeen's, mind you), but that would indeed ruin some of the fun. It's nice when the dots do line up, and you can just execute everyone who stands in the way of the iron clad logic of some of these Chomsky and Perle types.
The internet is hard.
I've been trying to find the original source of a quote attributed by Robert McNamara to William Perry, Secdef from 94-97. It's one of those real catchy quotes, so zillions of people (including Mr. Chomsky) are touting it as gospel on every forum extant. The quote (from McNamara's text) follows:
So finding the original source for that has been difficult because there are just so many returns for various searches of that. There are unfortunately no press releases within the .mil and .gov TLD's indicating that text (and, really, would the gubbermint actually keep something that inflammatory somewhere public?). I'm inclined to believe McNamara, but it's hard to believe that quote is not attributed anywhere else to Mr. Perry.
Suggestions welcome.
"I have never been more fearful of a nuclear detonation than now.… There is a greater than 50 percent probability of a nuclear strike on US targets within a decade."
So finding the original source for that has been difficult because there are just so many returns for various searches of that. There are unfortunately no press releases within the .mil and .gov TLD's indicating that text (and, really, would the gubbermint actually keep something that inflammatory somewhere public?). I'm inclined to believe McNamara, but it's hard to believe that quote is not attributed anywhere else to Mr. Perry.
Suggestions welcome.
14 November, 2006
cube etiquette
NOAA just moved us from our old decrepit buildings to a new fancier building. The old building had offices, and the new one is AOL-style, with no walls whatsoever, just 6' (as opposed to 9') cubes. This means that I stand a full head above my cube walls. Most of the other engineers in this wing of the building do, too. And apparently none of them have worked in cubes before. They continually yell over the tops of cubes, talking to coworkers across the office, etc. They hurl vitriole at eachother, complaining that one user was too stupid to look at the Ask Tom site for Oracle help, that so-and-so lost their login to some thing or other, and even how wonderful a "fifteen year old bottle of irish whisky" was. (side note: I discovered, to my horror, that we have a copy of one of our spacecraft operations manuals reprinted in Klingon. These are the people I work with.)
I'm really not against people being assholes. In fact, I'm not only a member ... But there needs to be moderation. AOL was pretty thoughtful in putting up taller cubes, which cut down on ambient noise significantly. And, I suppose, the people at AOL were accustomed to working in cubes. There's a sort of etiquette that comes to people in cubes after a while. Groundhogging is kind of frowned upon, and if you're going to (to quote Sungo) scream "cocks!" down the hall, please just do it once in a while. Not every fifteen minutes.
What really irritates me about this is not that I can't concentrate on not doing my job, but rather that I know saying anything to anyone will only bring down the wrath of either the coworkers who I asked, or some HR droid who thinks I'm not a "team player" or something equally inane.
The temporary (a few hours respite) solution is the Etymotics, which are in-ear, and triple-baffled. That makes the neanderthals go away. But how long can you listen to 2gb of music on a Nano? I just don't have the time to spend continually updating the stuff on the iPod, and certainly not because I am trying to escape my coworkers.
It's enough to make me want to go hide in the datacenter. It's cold, and it's loud, but the noise is white noise, not ... aw, fuck it.
I'm really not against people being assholes. In fact, I'm not only a member ... But there needs to be moderation. AOL was pretty thoughtful in putting up taller cubes, which cut down on ambient noise significantly. And, I suppose, the people at AOL were accustomed to working in cubes. There's a sort of etiquette that comes to people in cubes after a while. Groundhogging is kind of frowned upon, and if you're going to (to quote Sungo) scream "cocks!" down the hall, please just do it once in a while. Not every fifteen minutes.
What really irritates me about this is not that I can't concentrate on not doing my job, but rather that I know saying anything to anyone will only bring down the wrath of either the coworkers who I asked, or some HR droid who thinks I'm not a "team player" or something equally inane.
The temporary (a few hours respite) solution is the Etymotics, which are in-ear, and triple-baffled. That makes the neanderthals go away. But how long can you listen to 2gb of music on a Nano? I just don't have the time to spend continually updating the stuff on the iPod, and certainly not because I am trying to escape my coworkers.
It's enough to make me want to go hide in the datacenter. It's cold, and it's loud, but the noise is white noise, not ... aw, fuck it.
Considerable difficulty
I've been struggling with the next push forward in the book. It's something I have to write a lot of (probably just shy of 5,000 words). I've been coping with various (still) unexplained illness. Whether it's related to the C. albicans antics of earlier this year, I haven't any idea. I did a lot of research for it, so I have an idea of how the wording will be, but I'm trying to get myself into the heads of two people I just don't know at all, and who don't give interviews or publish anything. So I either have to fabricate something, or I have to get something that gives insight into who they are and how they operate. I'm really hesitant to fabricate anything.
I've also been toying with the idea of segregating the book into three distinct parts. It's cliché, I know. But if you consider it more a theatre piece, it makes more sense. It's essentially three acts. A parabola if you will.
Also difficult is that I just finished another of Cherryh's books. Well, three of them. I read The Chanur Saga, and while it's a little dated and possibly campy, it's definitely her. The books were written in the early 80s, and it's quite apparent that her writing has improved tremendously. She still uses the same sort of world-building techniques and language, but the copyediting has gotten substantially better. I'm kind of torn, reading her books. It is clear to me that she's just a magnificent writer, and I don't think that I'll ever really be able to compare to that. On the other hand, there are people writing some loathsome material out there. Of course, I've just thrown two stones, which means somebody out there is just going to vivisect me. It's probably unrealistic to set a bar for myself that's as high as Cyteen or Baxter's Ring. On the other hand, the basura coming out of 99% of the planet's "writers" is just that. Basura.
Hm. Maybe what I need to do is read a Clancy book again (or Dale Brown) to see what I absolutely cannot do. But then, that's a cop-out. Set the bar intentionally low so you won't fail. Is succeeding because the bar is too low worse than failing because it's too high?
The temptation to just plonk some shit out into the text is really compelling. I've been telling myself not to do this, as I know it will look like drivel and interfere with what I want to write when that particular bug flies up my ass (yay charming visuals).
And, lastly, this.
I've also been toying with the idea of segregating the book into three distinct parts. It's cliché, I know. But if you consider it more a theatre piece, it makes more sense. It's essentially three acts. A parabola if you will.
Also difficult is that I just finished another of Cherryh's books. Well, three of them. I read The Chanur Saga, and while it's a little dated and possibly campy, it's definitely her. The books were written in the early 80s, and it's quite apparent that her writing has improved tremendously. She still uses the same sort of world-building techniques and language, but the copyediting has gotten substantially better. I'm kind of torn, reading her books. It is clear to me that she's just a magnificent writer, and I don't think that I'll ever really be able to compare to that. On the other hand, there are people writing some loathsome material out there. Of course, I've just thrown two stones, which means somebody out there is just going to vivisect me. It's probably unrealistic to set a bar for myself that's as high as Cyteen or Baxter's Ring. On the other hand, the basura coming out of 99% of the planet's "writers" is just that. Basura.
Hm. Maybe what I need to do is read a Clancy book again (or Dale Brown) to see what I absolutely cannot do. But then, that's a cop-out. Set the bar intentionally low so you won't fail. Is succeeding because the bar is too low worse than failing because it's too high?
The temptation to just plonk some shit out into the text is really compelling. I've been telling myself not to do this, as I know it will look like drivel and interfere with what I want to write when that particular bug flies up my ass (yay charming visuals).
And, lastly, this.
08 November, 2006
Religion confronts science (fiction)
I don't think I've ever heard religious wackos use multi-syllable words, much less attempt to explain terraforming and sail-based space propulsion. Well, today I ran across this gem. What is wrong with these people? They seem like such frightened, ignorant children, mewling from under their papal mitre in a dark, safe corner of the universe, where God Really Exists. Christianity has such a fucking complex. Sheesh.
Near term fiction being untenable as a genre
Charlie has complained about this before. It happened to me once, in a different way. When Accelerando came out, I had written a few chapters that were vaguely reminiscent of what Charlie was doing. In this case, I've laid out the aftermath of the Bush administration (some years down the line, mind you). However, the longer I sit on this book and don't publish it, the sooner what I write will come true. Rumsfeld "resigning" isn't exactly monumental and important to me. Who Bush picked is important. I won't go into details because at this point, it really would spoil the book (I could tell you all the precise trajectory of the book, and it wouldn't make a difference. It's the details of the book that make it special. The message is just one I plucked from history, rather than something revelational).
Must finish book. Soon I'm not going to have anything to write about. Maybe what I should do is set it a little further in the future. The problem with doing this is that you go even further out on a limb, and it makes your writing look either speculative (read: fanciful) or just plain wrong (in the case of reading, in 2020, a book set in 2010, and looking back on what actually happened after the book was written). And I don't want to write science fiction. It's just not appropriate. But, if I finish the book in December, and I wind up getting it published some time next year, that will almost be the end of the Bush administration, and the Dems will have had enough time to start some ripples in government. So I'll be even further off the mark. Perhaps what I need to do instead, is to finish the book, reflect on it, and then set it a little bit further in the future right before I rush it off to be published.
Or, maybe, I could turn the tables around a little. I suppose if I really wanted to, I could turn back the clock a couple decades (that makes using Real People easier on me). The message is roughly the same. Nobody gets the impression that I'm writing SF. But the look-and-feel of the book is decidedly not Korea/Viet Nam/Cold War. It's definitely a 4GW kind of book. It would be a pain in the ass, at this point, to take either approach. It has to feel real in the readers' hands, or the message won't have anywhere near the kind of punch it needs.
Fret, fret.
Must finish book. Soon I'm not going to have anything to write about. Maybe what I should do is set it a little further in the future. The problem with doing this is that you go even further out on a limb, and it makes your writing look either speculative (read: fanciful) or just plain wrong (in the case of reading, in 2020, a book set in 2010, and looking back on what actually happened after the book was written). And I don't want to write science fiction. It's just not appropriate. But, if I finish the book in December, and I wind up getting it published some time next year, that will almost be the end of the Bush administration, and the Dems will have had enough time to start some ripples in government. So I'll be even further off the mark. Perhaps what I need to do instead, is to finish the book, reflect on it, and then set it a little bit further in the future right before I rush it off to be published.
Or, maybe, I could turn the tables around a little. I suppose if I really wanted to, I could turn back the clock a couple decades (that makes using Real People easier on me). The message is roughly the same. Nobody gets the impression that I'm writing SF. But the look-and-feel of the book is decidedly not Korea/Viet Nam/Cold War. It's definitely a 4GW kind of book. It would be a pain in the ass, at this point, to take either approach. It has to feel real in the readers' hands, or the message won't have anywhere near the kind of punch it needs.
Fret, fret.
06 November, 2006
Photography and more
Took a class last night on photo composition from one of the local photographers. He's pretty gifted, and I like his work, so it was a treat to have him both share his techniques and critique our photos. We were tasked with coming up with an ad to sell an Apple product. We were "suggested" a new Shuffle. I wanted to try and sell Apple Pants, but that was deemed inappropriate. Pants are just so much more interesting a subject than a Shuffle, especially with a macro (60/2.8, nice and sharp) lens. The guy teaching the class had a neat lens to show us, a 17-50/2.8 which doesn't quite reach as far as the 18-70 (f/3.8) that comes with the camera, but it's a lot faster. Pretty cool lens. I suspect we'll want something like that, the Nikkor 105mm macro, and maybe a 100-300 telephoto (hopefully with the image stabilization stuff). Between those lenses, we could shoot just about everything we come across.
One interesting thing that showed up last night is something we already knew: I am right-handed, but left eye dominant (we learned this during our training on rifles). This means that when I wind up offsetting lines into a photo, like a perspective or horizon, I usually wind up biasing towards the left. It just "feels" right for me. But if I'm not careful, I wind up doing it all the time and my photos look boring. So I need to be cautious about how I approach composition. Not just paying attention to what "feels" right, but what actually looks right as well.
Anyways, Sandy is much better with the 60/2.8 and macro in general. Her product shots were better than what I would have come up with. I really ought to get her a D200 or a D80.
One interesting thing that showed up last night is something we already knew: I am right-handed, but left eye dominant (we learned this during our training on rifles). This means that when I wind up offsetting lines into a photo, like a perspective or horizon, I usually wind up biasing towards the left. It just "feels" right for me. But if I'm not careful, I wind up doing it all the time and my photos look boring. So I need to be cautious about how I approach composition. Not just paying attention to what "feels" right, but what actually looks right as well.
Anyways, Sandy is much better with the 60/2.8 and macro in general. Her product shots were better than what I would have come up with. I really ought to get her a D200 or a D80.
03 November, 2006
Managing Linux with Kickstart
A question was asked of me today: "When will you be done with the OS installs?"
I was perplexed. "I am done."
"But if I install this piece of software on that machine, you're going to blow it away."
"That's correct."
"So when are you going to be done?"
"Never. Here's what we need to do. You and I need to work together to come up with a configuration for that software, and we will attach it to that machine's particular configuration, and when we kickstart it, the machine will come up ready with your application. This is a good system because any time we want to change the configuration or function of a machine, we do it in a text file on a single machine, rather than doing things manually. There's much less room for error."
"No, that's not possible."
I have yet to meet an application which cannot be packaged and shipped during installation. In fact, I've done this with entire databases (including Postgres and Oracle). Some people dislike this approach because they're the type of people who like to manually tinker with a machine (these are usually also the sort of people that insist they can't do their work with sudo, and must actually be root to do things). The problem with these type of people is, when you manually work on a machine, nobody knows what the current state is. Machines should be stateless. They should come up the same way, every time, ready to function. If not, we wind up fearing reboot, or upgrade, or hardware failure/replacement.
If state is stored somewhere on a server, we can switch functionalities from one machine to another, add functionalities or remove them, and clone machines very easily.
I'm not sure how opposition to this gets created. It seems to me that it's a wonderful thing if I can ask for my machine to be "reset" and come up with a fresh, working install as fast as the network transport and Anaconda will allow it.
I was perplexed. "I am done."
"But if I install this piece of software on that machine, you're going to blow it away."
"That's correct."
"So when are you going to be done?"
"Never. Here's what we need to do. You and I need to work together to come up with a configuration for that software, and we will attach it to that machine's particular configuration, and when we kickstart it, the machine will come up ready with your application. This is a good system because any time we want to change the configuration or function of a machine, we do it in a text file on a single machine, rather than doing things manually. There's much less room for error."
"No, that's not possible."
I have yet to meet an application which cannot be packaged and shipped during installation. In fact, I've done this with entire databases (including Postgres and Oracle). Some people dislike this approach because they're the type of people who like to manually tinker with a machine (these are usually also the sort of people that insist they can't do their work with sudo, and must actually be root to do things). The problem with these type of people is, when you manually work on a machine, nobody knows what the current state is. Machines should be stateless. They should come up the same way, every time, ready to function. If not, we wind up fearing reboot, or upgrade, or hardware failure/replacement.
If state is stored somewhere on a server, we can switch functionalities from one machine to another, add functionalities or remove them, and clone machines very easily.
I'm not sure how opposition to this gets created. It seems to me that it's a wonderful thing if I can ask for my machine to be "reset" and come up with a fresh, working install as fast as the network transport and Anaconda will allow it.
Not getting any better
About for weeks ago, we mostly declared the Candida "gone." I had a really tough week at work in which I could not get out of bed in the morning without substantial caffeine. The following week I did a little better. I was sleeping alright (albeit usually with a little Diphenhydramine), getting up with caffeine, but managing to get through an entire day's work without feeling tired or anything. I was also, of course, running and/or walking (at home, and at work, respectively). At work, I was usually eating lunch. A typical lunch was something like a microwave meal (one of the small ones so it would fit in the bag I use), and one or two yogurts. Sometimes an energy drink (the aforementioned "Stinger" drinks). The third week was pretty good. I was feeling better, but eating less. My running got better: my pace sped up, and the amount of running I could do in a week also increased. I had less soreness after a run. This started to deteriorate around the end of last week or the beginning of this week. I was unable to work Monday because I was physically incapable of it. I felt faint, weak. I felt like I couldn't catch my breath, and my head felt cloudy. I just felt "slow." I slept about 20 hours between Sunday and Monday. The extra sleep seemed to help, and I came back in to work on Tuesday, intending to just work four ten hour shifts. I could not, however, sleep Tuesday. So I worked through the night on Limits, and worked all day Wednesday. I slept fine Wednesday night, although I was tired from my all-nighter, and woke up Thursday morning in the same state as Monday. I was ready to go and get some caffeine in me when I realized that I couldn't walk in a straight line, my vision was blurry, and that it would be dangerous for me to drive. Sandy was alarmed at how "out of it" I was. Between Wednesday and Thursday I also slept 20 hours, or so.
During this period, I have had some problems I don't wish to discuss publicly, but which are very personal, very unpleasant, and involve blood in places I don't want it to be. That is, not in my body. The 24-hour "nurseline" from our health insurance suggested I go back to the doctors, that said problem was a bad sign. However, I am worried I will be admitted if I go back to the doctor and tell them I am bleeding. There's a lot of pain in my stomach (I've described this as "like I ate a sharp pinecone"). Yogurt seems to make the pain go away for six to eight hours, leading me to believe this is the Candida, again. Candida could also explain blood in that particular locale (e.g., from a lesion due to infection). So this week, when I've been able to eat, I have gotten a few hundred calories a day, with the exception of one evening in which we went out with a friend from California. This was half social call, half research, as I was attempting to find a place that stocked Pappy van Winkle 20 year reserve Bourbon (for the book, I'm not really a bourbon person). That day I probably got 1200-1500 calories. To give you an idea of how much pain I'm in, stomach-wise, I have been unable to consume a hydrocodone syrup which I take for congestion and coughing (which I still have). The syrup would help with the pain, but putting it in my stomach makes me violently sick.
So I'm vastly negative for the week, when I had been doing pretty well. I also have not been able to get much exercise in, nor much work (the former is a health thing, I want/need to do it, and the latter is not just important for the cash, but also because I take pride in getting my shit done). I feel that the two of them may combine to really fuck my life up in the coming weeks if I don't get whatever this is curbed RSN.
I miss the security of Microsoft's (and AOL's) health insurance and leave benefits. If this had come up with either of those companies, I could be admitted to VHC or GW, treated with my health insurance, and if necessary, take short-term disability. I do not want to see any more doctors, but the blood is alarming, as is the fact that I have woken up twice this week, hardly able to speak, much less stand or walk around speaking coherently.
I've mostly gotten what I needed to get done at work done. The kickstart server is running and mostly happy (although I have one weird kernel panic I haven't been able to track down), and I wired the racks into the switch. So everyone's ready to rumble, OS-wise, and the network is alive, connected, and the cables are neatly run and not hanging out all over the goddamn place (which is the normal sort of way to do things at most places).
I want the Taipei thing to be done so I can go to work for a company, W-2, and get myself out of the place I'm in (in more ways than one; I think I just need a reset).
We watched Kurosawa's Kairo ("Pulse") again tonight. This time Sandy did not fall asleep to it. It seems we agreed on most of the themes in the movie, although it seems the movie got in the way of the message the writer was trying to get across. We also saw "The Life Aquatic", which is a rather fun Bill Murray film. I've been fascinated at how much I can pick up about the writer from watching the content of a movie. It's something that I've picked up since I started writing. Almost as if the writing itself has made me learn how to critically watch a film or read a book. Perhaps other people learn this in school. School, of course, wasn't my cup of tea.
During this period, I have had some problems I don't wish to discuss publicly, but which are very personal, very unpleasant, and involve blood in places I don't want it to be. That is, not in my body. The 24-hour "nurseline" from our health insurance suggested I go back to the doctors, that said problem was a bad sign. However, I am worried I will be admitted if I go back to the doctor and tell them I am bleeding. There's a lot of pain in my stomach (I've described this as "like I ate a sharp pinecone"). Yogurt seems to make the pain go away for six to eight hours, leading me to believe this is the Candida, again. Candida could also explain blood in that particular locale (e.g., from a lesion due to infection). So this week, when I've been able to eat, I have gotten a few hundred calories a day, with the exception of one evening in which we went out with a friend from California. This was half social call, half research, as I was attempting to find a place that stocked Pappy van Winkle 20 year reserve Bourbon (for the book, I'm not really a bourbon person). That day I probably got 1200-1500 calories. To give you an idea of how much pain I'm in, stomach-wise, I have been unable to consume a hydrocodone syrup which I take for congestion and coughing (which I still have). The syrup would help with the pain, but putting it in my stomach makes me violently sick.
So I'm vastly negative for the week, when I had been doing pretty well. I also have not been able to get much exercise in, nor much work (the former is a health thing, I want/need to do it, and the latter is not just important for the cash, but also because I take pride in getting my shit done). I feel that the two of them may combine to really fuck my life up in the coming weeks if I don't get whatever this is curbed RSN.
I miss the security of Microsoft's (and AOL's) health insurance and leave benefits. If this had come up with either of those companies, I could be admitted to VHC or GW, treated with my health insurance, and if necessary, take short-term disability. I do not want to see any more doctors, but the blood is alarming, as is the fact that I have woken up twice this week, hardly able to speak, much less stand or walk around speaking coherently.
I've mostly gotten what I needed to get done at work done. The kickstart server is running and mostly happy (although I have one weird kernel panic I haven't been able to track down), and I wired the racks into the switch. So everyone's ready to rumble, OS-wise, and the network is alive, connected, and the cables are neatly run and not hanging out all over the goddamn place (which is the normal sort of way to do things at most places).
I want the Taipei thing to be done so I can go to work for a company, W-2, and get myself out of the place I'm in (in more ways than one; I think I just need a reset).
We watched Kurosawa's Kairo ("Pulse") again tonight. This time Sandy did not fall asleep to it. It seems we agreed on most of the themes in the movie, although it seems the movie got in the way of the message the writer was trying to get across. We also saw "The Life Aquatic", which is a rather fun Bill Murray film. I've been fascinated at how much I can pick up about the writer from watching the content of a movie. It's something that I've picked up since I started writing. Almost as if the writing itself has made me learn how to critically watch a film or read a book. Perhaps other people learn this in school. School, of course, wasn't my cup of tea.
31 October, 2006
Virginia 666: A Campfire Story, pt. 2
People are asking me about Nanowrimo. Sigh. Here's a piece. I am officially not participating, but this should feed the need for you people who keep asking.
I looked at the Java applet with some chagrin. The area it was pointing at was not exactly familiar to me. It wasn’t familiar at all. We were essentially to ride the 66 west of Washington until we hit Gainesville, and then sort of make a southerly turn into nowheresville. We were assured that once we got there, in the shadow of a 2800’ mountain, that we would be able to see magnitude seven stars. Of course, that was a whole tank of gas from where I sat. Our Subaru was faithful, and had all wheel drive, should we encounter snow (was there snow that high up?) or other inclement weather. It didn’t have much of a back seat, though, and I was frankly worried about putting a telescope into the trunk of the car and driving the ill-repaired roads in Northern Virginia. I suppose we wouldn’t be in Virginia for very long.
I checked the lunar calendar. We’d have to wait three weeks to head out there. What would we see when we got there? Would there be somewhere convenient to pull over and spend a few hours looking at the sky? Would we be able to take 30-minute exposures? There was so much uncertainty. It didn’t help that we would be traveling to a place in the middle of nowhere called “Wolftown.”
30 October, 2006
Anyone with a suggestion for calculating sunrise/sunset, nautical twilight, moonrise/moonset
is encouraged to contact me. I have found a few scripts:
http://www.hia-iha.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/cgi-bin/sunmoon.pl
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/aa_pap.pl
But they are both somewhat lacking for their own reasons. Additionally, they are both also sometimes unavailable when I am attempting to write about a sunrise or a sunset, and so on. This is suboptimal.
I am also considering compiling my notes and releasing them online (I almost always try to find out more about a book by going through the author's "stuff" online), including things like the Google Earth coordinates I am using to plot things like trajectories (and sunrise/sunset -- if anyone can get that data into Google Earth, or tell me how it can already do it, I will be *most* obliged). However, I am concerned this may lead to some liabilities. For example:
If I release coordinates for everything that's mentioned in the book which isn't obvious (such as Seattle being obvious, but a fictional person's home not being so), what happens if I manage to piss somebody off? I can't imagine how it would happen other than my saying that a character stayed at a hotel that I found using Google Earth (and released that coordinate). Said person turned out to be a real bad person, and maybe the hotel gets angry that the bad guy stayed there. Or, maybe I pull something out of my ass, and say that there is something where there isn't, only somebody owns that space of "isn't"ness and becomes angry that I have put a weapons facility in their patch of woods. Things like this.
If a character sketch is made available, do people get angry if I say "has x attribute similar to so-and-so person"? That strikes me as sticky.
Lastly, I am using music liberally throughout the book. Some of it is not copyrighted, so I can do what I like with it. Others are contemporary pieces, and I have used small snippets liberally. Do I need to get permission to use those? How big does something have to be before I am licensing somebody else's content? In a 100,000 word book, if I borrow thirty of your words, is that significant? Fret, fret.
Much progress has been made in the last twenty four hours.
http://www.hia-iha.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/cgi-bin/sunmoon.pl
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/aa_pap.pl
But they are both somewhat lacking for their own reasons. Additionally, they are both also sometimes unavailable when I am attempting to write about a sunrise or a sunset, and so on. This is suboptimal.
I am also considering compiling my notes and releasing them online (I almost always try to find out more about a book by going through the author's "stuff" online), including things like the Google Earth coordinates I am using to plot things like trajectories (and sunrise/sunset -- if anyone can get that data into Google Earth, or tell me how it can already do it, I will be *most* obliged). However, I am concerned this may lead to some liabilities. For example:
If I release coordinates for everything that's mentioned in the book which isn't obvious (such as Seattle being obvious, but a fictional person's home not being so), what happens if I manage to piss somebody off? I can't imagine how it would happen other than my saying that a character stayed at a hotel that I found using Google Earth (and released that coordinate). Said person turned out to be a real bad person, and maybe the hotel gets angry that the bad guy stayed there. Or, maybe I pull something out of my ass, and say that there is something where there isn't, only somebody owns that space of "isn't"ness and becomes angry that I have put a weapons facility in their patch of woods. Things like this.
If a character sketch is made available, do people get angry if I say "has x attribute similar to so-and-so person"? That strikes me as sticky.
Lastly, I am using music liberally throughout the book. Some of it is not copyrighted, so I can do what I like with it. Others are contemporary pieces, and I have used small snippets liberally. Do I need to get permission to use those? How big does something have to be before I am licensing somebody else's content? In a 100,000 word book, if I borrow thirty of your words, is that significant? Fret, fret.
Much progress has been made in the last twenty four hours.
Bourbon absolves sins
I am pleased to report that what was probably the most difficult scene of Limits has been written, and distributed as draft to a couple of subject matter experts. I regret that I've been doing some going back and changing scenes to make everything make more sense, and have completely fucked up times and locations.
The problem is that the book happens to take place in many different places at once. So I must keep track, if a person is at Midway island, talking to a person in Clearwater, Florida, that the time is very different in both places. It might be 8am where I started this scene, but it's still 5am where the other actor in the sequence is. So does it make sense? This gets even harder when you start talking about orbits, and you have people who are on different DAYS.
I have no idea how I am going to fix this. But, with the exception of that stuff, the whole thing is muuuuch better, lots is getting written. I think I've pounded out about ten thousand words since this time last week, and maybe ripped out a thousand or two.
There is also good news. I can see the whole book now. It is written. I know what will happen, why, when, where, and how, to every single player in the book. I have sketched the outline, and I am so pleased that we've reached this point. I sat down with Sandy and narrated it for her. It took a while (how do you summarize an entire book over dinner?), but she got everything, and I think she didn't get what she was expecting. She said, "well, it's not a very... happy book." No, it's not. She also said, "that's not really the sort of thing I read." But she understood that it is not a Clancy novel. Thank god. It's a space opera, without the space. I've been referring to it as operatic, and I think it fits. Sandy even went as far as to compare it to Hamlet and tell me that I can't just tell people a sad, sad, story.
Must write. I want it done by the end of the year. I want galleys distributed by 12/31. It's going to be a LOT of work, and it might wind up a little shorter than the mark. But then, Haldeman's Forever War is a very short book with a very clear message. And I think everyone would agree that it is a very important book.
The problem is that the book happens to take place in many different places at once. So I must keep track, if a person is at Midway island, talking to a person in Clearwater, Florida, that the time is very different in both places. It might be 8am where I started this scene, but it's still 5am where the other actor in the sequence is. So does it make sense? This gets even harder when you start talking about orbits, and you have people who are on different DAYS.
I have no idea how I am going to fix this. But, with the exception of that stuff, the whole thing is muuuuch better, lots is getting written. I think I've pounded out about ten thousand words since this time last week, and maybe ripped out a thousand or two.
There is also good news. I can see the whole book now. It is written. I know what will happen, why, when, where, and how, to every single player in the book. I have sketched the outline, and I am so pleased that we've reached this point. I sat down with Sandy and narrated it for her. It took a while (how do you summarize an entire book over dinner?), but she got everything, and I think she didn't get what she was expecting. She said, "well, it's not a very... happy book." No, it's not. She also said, "that's not really the sort of thing I read." But she understood that it is not a Clancy novel. Thank god. It's a space opera, without the space. I've been referring to it as operatic, and I think it fits. Sandy even went as far as to compare it to Hamlet and tell me that I can't just tell people a sad, sad, story.
Must write. I want it done by the end of the year. I want galleys distributed by 12/31. It's going to be a LOT of work, and it might wind up a little shorter than the mark. But then, Haldeman's Forever War is a very short book with a very clear message. And I think everyone would agree that it is a very important book.