The Trackball of Truth

Mark Hamill as the Joker for the Dark Knight Sequel

2010-03-31T20:05:00.000-04:00

No, that is not a breaking news item. It is a call to action. Here is how I see it, without Heath Ledger, there is only one person who can play the Joker well enough. Mark Hamill has done the voice of the Joker for over a decade, and once you hear him, you know he is The Joker. He did the voice in the animated series and stole the show in the recent hit video game Batman: Arkham Asylum.

His long time co-star in the voice booth, Kevin Conroy, was asked once about how Mark Hamill can do that voice. He said that Hamill goes to another place, that he becomes the Joker. As far as live action acting, don't forget that Hamill rocked Broadway in the lead role of Mozart in Amadeus in the 1980s, and was deliciously evil in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. And, it's been 30 years since he was Luke Skywalker: with some green hair and that voice, no one will think Jedi.

Here's how the Dark Knight sequel with Mark Hamill would work:

Batman is forced underground, as hinted at the end of Dark Knight. Like in Dark Knight, the original Joker has spawned copycats, and Batman can't keep up with them all with the Gotham PD after him. The Gotham PD detective chasing him is named Edward Nigma. He is incredibly smart, a clean cut boy scout, loves puzzles and discovering who Batman's identity is the greatest puzzle he has ever had.

Nigma infiltrates a Joker gang to see how Batman operates. The new Joker discovers that he is a cop and laughs at Nigma's quixotic quest. "Who cares who Batsy was?" The Joker says. "You'll take all the fun out of it. Just. Like. A. Cop." The Joker shoots Nigma in the knee and leaves him behind to slow down Batman during a chase. Nigma has to leave the PD and all he is left with a limp, a pension and a burning anger to unmask the Dark Knight.

He becomes the Riddler to draw Batman away from Joker by committing outsize crimes that strike closer and closer to Bruce Wayne as the Riddler pieces together the Dark Knight's identity. The Riddler is playing with Batman, trying to see what resources and skills Batman has.

As Wayne Manor is rebuilt, Bruce has to decide if his life as Bruce is expendable. The Riddler is getting closer, and if Bruce Wayne is exposed, Batman will cease to exist. "Batman was meant to strike fear into criminals. Now it seems only to inspire them, to challenge them. Maybe a regular guy like Jim Gordon is the best answer to crime. Show the criminals a decent cop, with a family, who's not perfect instead of a rich boy parading around as a bat," Bruce says to Alfred in one dark moment.

The Joker just wants to torture Batman and Gotham for giggles; he doesn't care who Batman is. Except that he realizes that the Riddler is on to something: the greatest torture of Batsy would be to reveal his identity to the city. He captures Batman, peeks under the mask, laughs maniacally, and sets him free. Now that he knows the secret, and Riddler doesn't, he's going to torture Riddler as well. And Batman can't come after him or the secret will be get out. Joker has free reign and the only way Batman can keep the secret is to kill him.

Joker teases the Riddler mercilessly, until Riddler falls for a trap that Batman has laid and finds Joker and proof that the Joker is Batman. Riddler kills Joker, which the Joker finds hilarious, knowing the true secret will die with him. Batman captures Riddler and sends him off to Arkham.

This is just a rough sketch, it's missing an overarching theme (other than being a masked hero eventually backfires), and I have no idea who would play Riddler, but Chris Nolan is welcome to have the idea.

My Mass Effect Rant

2010-02-15T22:17:00.002-05:00

Mass Effect is a sci-fi role-playing video game that was released in 2008. I played the PC version, which scored an 89/100 on Metacritic. The game has been lauded for its innovative dialog system, its engaging story and its roleplaying potential. The sequel was just released and has been received by the video gaming public with a huge amount of enthusiasm.

I thought it sucked. Horribly.

Sucky point #1: elevators. There are a lot of them, and they take forever. There's even a damn elevator inside your own starship, and it has less than 5 decks! Some of these elevator rides are at least 15-30 seconds long. And during the whole ride you get to do nothing but watch the back of your character's head. Exciting, no? This is bad design, and, frankly, disrespectful of a player's time. Did Otis Elevator provide funding for this game's development?

Sucky point #2: talking. Bioware is known for shaping a character's personality and the storyline via how the player has them interact with others. They did this to great effect in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. In Mass Effect, it feels like half the game is talking to non-player characters with little effect. But the dialogue choices don't reflect what is actually said (somehow this is an improvement?). Eventually, I turned on the subtitles and space-barred through the text. So much for all of that voice acting. Doing so meant that I ended up choosing some dialogue choices randomly, to no apparent difference in any outcome. Did AT&T provide funding for this game's development?

Sucky point #3: story. A soldier is the chosen one to save the galaxy from omnipotent Reapers that wipe out all organic life in the galaxy on a regular basis. Why do they do this every million years or so? They are too alien for us to understand - a writer's cop out, especially in a game filled with aliens. Weak. Even worse was that many of the side quests involved idiotic errands, like telling alien B that alien A like-liked them. Did Clorox provide funding for this game's development?

Sucky point #4: graphics. My 6 year old son wanted to know why my character had a big scar running along his jawline. I pointed out that all of the characters had that same scar, among many others. Oh, and the disappearing terrain tiles on planet was a lot of fun. I remember playing crappy games in the 90s with better graphics, better character animation but a lot less acclaim than this one. Did a plastic surgeon provide funding for this game's development?

Sucky point #5: gameplay. Combat was irritating, level design was boring, controls were rough and it. crashed. a. lot. during. fast. moving. action. sequences. The vehicle controls were deplorable. The inventory system was amateurish. And supposedly there were 'biotic' and 'technological' weapons, but I never noticed these and everything was a gun battle on rails. I don't think anyone would have provided funding to accomplish this.

Yes, a pretty harsh review. Clearly, I don't get what all of the excitement is about. And I could be wrong - most gamers seemed to worship at the feet of this game.

Five new lessons learned about tying shoes

2010-01-24T07:34:00.002-05:00

The truth is that even this most basic of life skills can be improved in its teaching and executing, and you have to be open to these things even after thirty years of doing it the old and inefficient way.

I had one hell of a time learning how to do tie my shoes when I was five. My father even took an old Florsheim dress shoe and painted each part a bright color to teach the vocabulary of the shoe (tongue, sole, heel) because I was not getting any of it. The shoe was awesome: more colorful than a clown shoe and utterly ridiculous because it was a dress shoe.

But it didn't matter: I just could not get the knot right long after my younger brother aced it. My sister, who was about 1 at the time, learned before me, according to the ever more exaggerated family myths. Like many of my troubles as a kid, the parents chalked this up to being my fault (lazy, uncooperative, etc.) rather than something beyond my control. My parents were pissed and I felt like a worthless idiot.

It turns out that there are at least 17 different ways to tie your shoes. I found this site by googling 'tying a shoe' and choosing the first site it returned. Lesson #1: check the internet on how to improve on the most mundane tasks. It will prevent you from stumbling along in frustration due to incomplete information and outdated methods. And frustrating others trying to learn your ancient ways. Unfortunately, I learned this only when writing this blog post.

It turns out that many of us have been working with a substandard shoelace knot, at least for beginners. There are two stages to tying the knot: the starting knot and the loop knot. With the standard starting knot, you have to plant a finger on the knot to hold it tight while you do the loop knot. Lesson #2: use a double starting knot instead. You will have both hands free to tie and twist the loops. Go ahead, try it.

It worked, huh? My wife learned this from a coworker whose child was taught this in preschool years ago. Lesson #3: talk to others. Like many innovations, this is simple, effective, but does not appear to have spread very far, in part because who shares shoe-tying information? It happened only because my wife brought it up when discussing the travails of teaching my son to tie his shoes. Even still, I don't expect many to try this, because tying shoes is an everyday task, and people are used to the inefficient method, some will no doubt consider this weird.

Speaking of weird, when I was trying to teach my son, my wife watched closely and pronounced that I was doing it wrong - something about which loop was first, or which way to circle the loop. We realized that righties and lefties do the loop knot differently. Which would make it very difficult for a lefty to teach a righty or vice versa. My father and my son are both righties, and I am a lefty. Lesson #4: find the right teacher.

Lesson #5: Subtle structural issues are often the culprit for what are mistaken as a child's behavior problem. In my case, it was being left-handed. This same lesson went unlearned in many other episodes with me.

The New York Times is not worth paying for

2010-01-18T08:51:00.000-05:00

The journalism industry is grinding its way through a nasty transition, mostly because the revenue side has fallen apart. Newspapers traditionally have made their money off of ads, with the reader subscriptions often just to support delivery services or as a minimal revenue source. (This is how 'free' print newspapers and broadcast TV can be 'free': they are so chock full of paid ads.)

But the ads have disappeared as advertisers have moved to radio, TV, the internet and even video games. The internet has made newspapers as a delivery channel exceedingly inferior. The only way for them to survive is as websites. But the ad revenue on websites has taken a huge hit because of the recession and because advertisers are figuring out that ads are easy to ignore on the web.

To save itself financially, the New York Times will charge readers for access to its content. It did this with disastrous results half a decade ago, but again, it feels like it has no choice. Back then, I was one of those who paid for TimeSelect. But the times have changed.

First, there are plenty of other free news sources that seemed to have found a working business model: Huffington Post and Politico come to mind. I think it is because they don't have the expenses of a local newspaper (local, state, regional, etc.). In the global environment for global news, the NYT just doesn't compare to free sources, RSS feeds, etc.

Second, the quality of news has sunk to a point where it is not worth paying for. Journalists have an exceedingly high opinion of themselves that is not based on how well they do their jobs, but simply based on their role in society as 'the press.' This has clearly been the case at the New York Times, with its deplorable reporting about WMD in Iraq, it's phoned in, stenographic political reporting, etc. Money is not draining out of journalism solely because of the internet, but because of low quality.

Yes, if this sounds a bit like the hubris of bankers who expect to be paid because they are bankers, not because they are good at what they do, bingo. The difference is that bankers, so far, have an excellent business model. Oh, and the bankers don't get any of my money either, except for the one bank that bought my mortgage, which I had no choice over.

What should the Times do instead, you ask, you snarky reader? Half the Op-ed columnists are big enough properties in their own right that they could make it as media properties, with speaking fees and book royalties allowing them to 'blog' to readers for free. Tom Friedman, Nick Kristof, Paul Krugman and David Brooks would probably be fine. Frank Rich, Gail Collins, Ross Douhat, Bob Hebert and Maureen Dowd probably don't have the media presence to pull it off. As for the NYT itself, well, like GM, it is probably headed for a slow death regardless of what it does. And it will do so without my financial support.

It's not about connecting dots, it's about management and leadership

2010-01-01T22:37:00.002-05:00

It's become apparent that the media has jumped all over this 'spy agencies didn't connect the dots' meme about the Xmas Detroit flight bomber. They act shocked, shocked that this has happened. Wasn't this the whole problem with 9/11 that was fixed with the new security procedures, etc.?

No, actually the unconnected dots story is old and seems immune to modern attempts to correct it. And it is not just a national security story. And it is not about connecting the dots. The truth is that this is a failure of management and leadership, not analysis and data collection. See if you analysts out there can figure out the pattern here:

1986: The space shuttle Challenger explodes supposedly because no one connected the dots on the O-ring and freezing temperatures. NASA's investigation actually points the blame finger at how decisions are made and problems with management sacrificing safety for keeping to the launch schedule.

1999: The dot-com bubble causes the stock market to skyrocket and then tank despite data showing irrational exuberance. People lament the lack of connecting the dots by the Fed, but the problem was that Greenspan didn't take action by raising interest rates and call for more regulation in lending.

2001: 9/11 happens because no one connected the dots on al Qaeda plots. The country solemnly concludes that it wasn't a problem in collecting the information, or analyzing it, but on acting on it. Ditto for Enron, MCI, etc.

2003: The shuttle Columbia explodes because no one 'connected the dots' on damage to the heat shield. But, hint hint, the investigation concludes that management failed to act, not that the analysis was lacking.

2003: We go to war in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction, even though all of the reliable analysis points to there being none. Attempts to blame the analysis fall on deaf ears when it becomes clear that management dismissed the analysis before it was even started.

2008: The housing market bubble pops, taking the stock market bubble down with it. If only the Fed, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the rest of the government connected the dots, right? It turns out that all of the data was collected, the analysis was done, but that decision-makers and action takers chose to ignore it because they wanted to let the good times roll.

Spring 2009: Mexican authorities repeatedly and desperately alert the World Health Organization about an outbreak of a new flu. WHO drops the ball and does not follow its own procedures for dealing with it, and the delay in their response allows a global pandemic to spring forth, killing thousands.

Xmas 2009: An almost plane bombing happens not because the analysis was not done, but because at each step, the decision makers did not act when their own procedures told them to, starting from our embassy in Nigeria, to the NSA intel guys who knew about Nigerian terrorists training in Yemen, to the DHS people who are supposed to flag people who pay for one-way tickets with cash and don't check luggage. Any one of these pieces of intel was enough to blow the whistle, revoke the visa, do the extra search, etc. and block the guy from boarding the plane. But no one pulled the trigger. Why? They didn't think their piece of information was serious enough or sufficient even though all known procedures and common sense says it was. That is a decision-making failure, not an analytical one. And it happened about a half dozen times in this one case alone.

Why does this keep happening? The answer is pretty straightforward, if you connect the dots.

A) Collecting data is much easier than analyzing it. We are really good at collecting data.

B) Analysis is not all that hard either. In all of these cases, the analysis was done and the conclusions were straightforward enough that a kid in elementary school would know what to take away. (Heat shield probably busted: don't reenter atmosphere!) But the analysis (and analysts) are easy scapegoats for the real problem, which is that...

C) The authorities dismiss the analysis because they don't wanna do what it calls them to do. Acting on the analysis requires decision-makers who are conditioned/trained/promoted to move incrementally, cautiously and with consensus to do something drastic, do it quickly and piss a lot of people off. It's just more convenient for them to dismiss the analysis and justify their dismissal under the guise of prudence, pragmatism, etc. And as a result, the disaster happens.

Solution: we need decision-makers who will act when needed, who don't pass the buck or shy away from their responsibility. There is no procedural reform, no mild incentive changes or organizational reshuffling that will make it happen. This is where the nitty gritty of leadership comes in. Executives need a line of Captain Kirks, David Farraguts and George S. Pattons who will act swiftly and they need to support them so they can carry out their whistle-blowing capability. Lives are on the line.

For you, dear reader, a bonus example where you get to play the manager, with your own money:

2010: the stock market is likely overvalued. Here's some analysis in the NYT that is the equivalent of announcing that a 20% downturn is due, according to PE ratios. You now have the data and the analysis. What will you do? If the analysis is right (and I am not saying that it is) and you take that 20% hit in your stocks' value, then you have little to complain about when others take the same cautious route.

Happy No EOY Recap Here

2009-12-31T11:28:00.001-05:00

If you were looking for an end-of-2009 recap, here it is. "2009: 365 days of the world being better than it was in 2008."

There will be no recap of this blog's 2009 posts or to recap what has happened to me personally in 2009. The truth is that doing those things smacks of being egregiously self-centered and self-absorbed. Plus, I don't see any demand for it from my 1.5 readers.

Go spend your internutz minutes on something more useful.

The truth about airline security

2009-12-29T23:18:00.002-05:00

Lots of people, especially frequent fliers, are upset about the new flight restrictions in the wake of the almost bombing of that Xmas day flight to Detroit.

Yes, the restrictions seem unrelated to the particulars of the incident (restricting carry-on baggage, when the bomb was in the guy's underwear?). Most restrictions have a low probability of doing anything other than making any attempt so cumulatively difficult that terrorists give up. So TSA throws a bunch of smelly crap deterrents at the wall and hope enough sticks that the terrorists stumble away from the stench. Obviously, this is not working well, and I bet it is backfiring. I suspect we are giving the engineers and scientists, who seem to make up 90% of the terrorists, fascinating security-beating puzzles to solve. Wonderful.

Yes, some of these restrictions are probably driven by the airline industry with little actual connection to security. We have a carry-on epidemic in this country, and telling you that 'security' is the reason why you can't bring a metric shit ton of personal belongings into the cabin is probably the only way to handle it. For security reasons, check your bag, or better yet, FedEx your personal baggage train to your destination ahead of time. The plane, see, is a passenger plane, not a flying storage shed.

Yes, airline passengers will be punished for the gaps in the no-fly list and the lack of scanning equipment at airports. Because those gaps are considered a given and serious attempts to close them were abandoned long ago due to cost or other reasons. TSA is operating under the assumption that terrorists will board planes, so they figure the best they can do is to make sure the terrorists can't destroy the planes they board.

Yes, there are security people who thrive on laying down more restrictions. TSA probably has groups of restrictions that get activated based on the incident. This latest round is what we get for a near miss: for a hit, they would probably ban all carry-on luggage and make passengers wear nothing but hospital gowns. And security people who dream this stuff up probably think the notion of balancing freedom and security is some kind of sick joke. It's all security concerns all the time with them. That's how security people are: that's their job.

Yes, the terror attempts are becoming increasingly inept. Three fourths of the 2001 simultaneous hijackings worked, but the whole concept was a one-shot deal. The shoe bombing failed. Now the 'pants on fire' approach has also failed. The Acme Corp. rectally-stored dynamite stick can't be too far off in our collective future.

Yes, it would be much better for everyone involved (other than terrorists) if the security people took a smarter approach to security. Like maybe putting the burden of proof on passengers, like is done for renting a car, buying a gun, getting a mortgage (post 2007) or obtaining a passport. Give everyone a safety score, like a credit score, and have security requirements scale inversely with the score. Airline travel is a privilege, not a right. Don't like that idea? Well, there's tons of others that are similarly outside of the box we are currently in. Like wearing airline-provided flight suits, for an extra charge, and in exchange skipping the metal detector. It will feel like being an astronaut: a new, fun airline experience!

Yes, those of us who don't fly often are snickering at your outrage. Some of you folks fly too damn much; something like 50% of all domestic flights are for less than 500 miles, a flight of little over an hour. Take a train, use a phone, drive a car, send an email. We should ban flights that aren't long enough for drink service. The helicopter and railroad industries probably need the boost.

What would you like to do instead? Because I think that a lot of the bellyaching about the new restrictions is coming from the same folks who want the TSA to go to any length to keep them safe, so long as they are not trying to catch a flight themselves. The truth is that you can't have it both ways, even if TSA was pumping out the most brilliant security procedures ever.

The Rewrite of the Jedi

2009-12-08T22:45:00.000-05:00

There is a part of Return of the Jedi that bugs me. No, it's not the Ewoks. There is one part in the final act, the most important act of the entire trilogy, that is just flat out wrong. You ever watch, read or hear a story and realize that it has completely gone off the rails? Jumping the shark is just a subset of this phenomenon.

My problem is with the final confrontation in the Death Star when Vader suggests that Leia may turn to the Dark Side if Luke doesn't, and in response, Luke yells 'Never!' The setup for this wrong moment is Vader and Luke have already tried to turn one another unsuccessfully on Endor. Luke attacked the Emperor, Vader intercedes, they battle. Luke hides and Vader goads him to fight by realizing that Luke is protective of Leia. He realizes he's hit a soft spot and uses it to anger Luke to the point of attacking him.

1st moment that plays wrong: Vader uses knowledge of Leia to goad Luke, nothing more. Think about this: Vader just learned that Luke has a sister, meaning he has a daughter, Leia Organa. Vader is calm, using the Force, able to think clearly. A daughter that is very similar to her mother, a daughter whose planet he blew up and who he oversaw the torture of. And his only reaction is to use it to make Luke angry enough to attack him by threatening to turn her to the Dark Side.

2nd moment that plays wrong: Luke falls for it and attacks him, yelling that horrible "Never!" Why? Is there any reason at all to think that Leia would turn to the Dark Side? She is the only hero who never wavers in her beliefs, even when her world is threatened. Why would he be worried about that? And it upsets him so that he figures its better to fall to the Dark Side now to stop it? My first clue that something was wrong with the end of Jedi was when Luke yells "Never!" and charges Vader.

3rd moment that plays wrong: two minutes later, Vader turns to the good side and saves Luke. Why? Apparently because the Emperor is about to kill Luke and pleads for Vader to save him. So after 20 years at the Emperor's side, killing Jedi children, killing Padme, including apparently ready to destroy both his children by turning them to the Dark Side, Vader pulls the biggest turnaround since the Grinch's heart grew in size. And the Emperor, who doesn't trust Vader at all since this whole Luke business came up, who can read his thoughts, he doesn't see it coming at all. This is just weak.

I agree with George Lucas on the major theme to be tied up here: the son resists the Dark Side, and ultimately redeems the father, Rebellion wins. Good ending, fits the mythical themes and motifs. Got it. But the execution doesn't work. It could have been so much better:

A stronger dramatic moment would be for Vader to turn when he learns about Leia. Luke had him on the fence down on Endor. Luke can feel his father's conflict, remember? The Leia surprise should do it. From the end of Empire we know he wants Luke to join him to overthrow the Emperor. Now he knows he has a son and a daughter who are on the right side, and how can he not be proud of Leia, who must remind him of Padme? There would be a ton of emotions going on behind the mask, none to the advantage of the Emperor.

A stronger action scene after the lull when Luke refuses to fight would be a 2 on 1 of Vader and Luke versus Palpatine. We now know that the Emperor has some awesome combat skills with the Force lightning and the unorthodox lightsaber work from Revenge of the Sith.

On top of an awesome fight scene, you have father and son trying to protect each other, because they have found each other anew and are desperately afraid they will lose the other. But in the end, Vader sacrifices himself, killing the Emperor in the process, to save Luke. Because he figures that Luke deserves to live more than he does.

A big finish. It works. I know because I rewrote that part of the Jedi script. If you want to see it, drop a comment here.

The truth about being a contrarian

2009-11-14T07:24:00.002-05:00

The truth about being a contrarian is that it is a tough position to have. Cassandras, futurists, technical experts, etc. are the people who inevitably hold the minority opinion on a topic. They may be sought out to entertain, educate or just as an intellectual freak show. They are often the punching bag that conventional wisdom takes some cheap shots on. But it can wear on the contrarian.

Yes, I have been a contrarian my whole life and it's not because I choose to be, but because I think differently. Sometimes I come off as a contrarian just because I give voice to an angle of an issue that has been woefully missed, even if I don't agree with it. In those cases, bringing it up is often to get the angle discussed a bit, shed some light on it, and not to argue that it is right or wrong. Sometimes it is because I just see more angles on a subject, or I can cut through to the heart of an issue rather than be distracted by side issues or minutiae. Contrarianism comes in many flavors.

My contrarian opinions are not always right, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and the blues don't come from batting less than twenty percent. The contrarian blues don't happen because the contrarian has the minority opinion and loses a lot. The blues happen to the person who brings a contrarian opinion to bear and no one pays attention to it. They can't get past the velvet rope of conventional thinking/wisdom. Agreeing with the conventional wisdom seems to be the prerequisite for participating in a discussion on many many different subjects.

Ironically, some of you may be assuming that I am subtly referring to work. This is actually not true at all - work seems to be more open to thinking differently than ever before, or maybe I am less contrarian than usual. I am really referring to society at large, from public policy to product design to traffic management, it seems like the barring of contrarianism has become more commonplace.

A near perfect natural experiment in this regard will happen very shortly. The President has called for a jobs summit, because the conventional wisdom, and the politically expedient options, apparently have not worked and unemployment is over 10%. He seems very open to any and all ideas that may work, so the contrarians should be able to at least not be barred or ignored.

Let's see if 1) anyone gets in who has contrarian ideas, and 2) if the media, or the administration, or its critics listens to those ideas. It is perfectly okay to reject them out of hand, the point is to see if these ideas are let into the discussion at all.

Messing up math

2009-11-03T21:02:00.003-05:00

This op-ed from the Baltimore Sun elegantly describes my thoughts about how math education has gone awry. It is almost like math is a subject we don't understand, so we teach it in the most oddly incorrect ways.

We teach math, like algebra and trigonometry, which the vast majority of us never use afterward. There's a fine line between having a basic knowledge of a subject and slogging through college level detail on a subject. English, social studies, even the health curriculum seems to hit the right balance.

Conversely, we don't teach students math they could use in their daily life, and which could be mastered at a developmentally-appropriate age. Statistics and money management should replace trig and calculus before college. Mortgages and interest rates instead of sine and cosine.

The way we teach math also drives students away from the subject by making them memorize meaningless rules of advanced techniques. Without understanding the math they learn in middle and high school because it is not developmentally appropriate, students give up on the subject.

Our study shows that what we like to do makes us healthier! Right...

2009-10-12T21:16:00.004-04:00

Have I not posted in a month? Good grief. Well, here's something I have been chewing over for a while.

The truth about studies showing the health benefits of alcohol consumption is that they are wishful thinking wrapped in scientific-studies biased in subtle ways.

Here is a recent one: that alcohol consumption can reduce the risk of dementia.

First, be a bit dubious of a study that reviews the results of other studies. It's almost original research, but it's not the same thing as constructing a study to focus on that issue.

Second, be skeptical of studies that bless behavior people want to do anyway. Whether it is simply media spin, subtle bias on the part of the researchers or overt bias, it's pretty dodgy.

Third, be enormously skeptical of any study that can't separate out behavioral aspects that have non-random socio-economic correlations.

For this study, chances are that there are a number of factors related to alcohol consumption and the risk of dementia and Alzheimer's. Those who drink alcohol may be more socially active, which can reduce the risk of dementia. Those in and out of hospitals and nursing homes are less able to drink alcohol compared to healthier people. Moderate wine-drinking professors emeritus may have a much lower risk of dementia than their alcohol-abusing lower educated and lower income cohorts who are more prone to heavy alcohol consumption. Obese elderly likely are not moderate drinkers, and we know obesity has a strong effect on mental functionality.

Conclusion: You can't separate out these factors, so tying alcohol consumption to a lower risk of dementia is likely spurious, at best.

Who knew free-running was for real?

2009-09-15T21:42:00.001-04:00

There's two kinds of people in the world: those who like to be chased and those who do the chasing. I mean literally, not in some kind of financial, romantic or metaphysical. I mean driving, running, even walking.

As a young kid, I knew that I liked being chased much more than doing the chasing. All I had to do was stay ahead of the pursuer, and I sort of controlled where the chase went. I would use my big mouth to get other kids to chase me on the school playground. I rarely got caught.

I wasn't especially fast. It was because I would take unconventional paths, racing full speed toward obstacles like tree roots, other kids, playground equipment, etc. The other kids would have to slow down and still would trip, stumble and backtrack, allowing me to get away.

How did I do it? Somehow, I was able to observe, plan and execute a route through the obstacles long before I physically reached them. I could see the route through a tight spot before I come to it, planned where to put my lead foot, how to twist my torso, and so on. I had to solve this puzzle continually and it was great fun to get that rush as I was able to do it, all while keeping the pursuers at arms length.

To do this, I had to cut certain things close: twisting and turning to fit through small gaps, avoid tree branches or jungle gym bars, running on ice. This skill greatly helped in my brief but legendary career in the difficult world of elementary school dodgeball.

Doing this produced a certain amount of grace in movement, from the constant motion, the minimal exertion to avoid obstacles combined with a constant speed. It creates a kind of high, flowing across the ground, mind moving faster than my feet.

This, I found out recently, thanks to Paul Blart: Mall Cop, is a sport called free running, or parkour in France. These two physical disciplines are very close to what I did as a kid. That is pretty awesome. Watching free running is nearly as much fun as doing it, I bet.

Now that I'm living here in the future, where's my free running HD channel?

Toy Story Legos mentioned in story about Lego toys

2009-09-07T17:34:00.005-04:00

Yes, when Toy Story 3 comes out next summer, there will be a new line of Lego sets for it. They will join SpongeBob, Indiana Jones, Batman, Star Wars and other themed Lego product lines. Pretty much you put a cool media thing in front of Lego, and I start to salivate.

K/2 to NYT for breaking this particular toy story. For those of you Lego fans, whether you are an Adult Fan Of Lego (AFOL) or searching for bricks for your kids, the NYT has a big feature piece on the company and its bricky goodness.

(What is k/2? It's short for 'kudos to' my improvement on the h/t moniker, which I think is not useful and to quote Inigo Montoya: I do not think it means what you think it means. Princess Bride Legos? That would so rock.)

It's a hoot that they found someone who dislikes the company's resurgence and all-around success, because Lego is deep into movie and TV-themed product lines. Substitutes Hollywood's imagination for open-ended play of old-fashioned Legos, they claim. Someone ought to tell them that the sets come apart and can be built into whatever you want.

You want creative? How about the new Fire Brigade set:

And the update of the 1958 Town Plan set, which Minnie Trackball just got for her birthday:

And this fan built one, which is jaw-dropping gorgeous:

And soon I will post the pictures from Brick Fair 09, which will blow your yellow cylindrical head right off of that peg you call a neck.

The truth about this generation of video game consoles

2009-08-28T21:22:00.004-04:00

The truth about this generation of video game consoles (Wii, PS3, Xbox360).

Wii Pros:

Created a new audience of gamers
Did motion control first and best
Made gaming a physical activity
Ingenious games
Cheapest console

Wii Cons:

Relatively high ratio of crappy games, or overpriced motion control demos
Motion plus add-on should have been standard
No other entertainment choices; not used often
Could fade fast: outdated graphics, new gamers won't buy a lot of games or upgrade
Cheapest: limited memory, loud fan noise, disk drive is low quality
Expensive games: lower price tag but many games should be $5 mini-games (Smooth Moves, Wii Sports Resort, Wii Play, etc.)

Truth: Mixed

PS3 Pros:

High cost offset by 1080p HD graphics and super duper computer-like Cell processor
Outstanding games like Little Big Planet, Rag Doll Kung Fu
Is almost a one-stop entertainment hub: , upconverts DVDs, Blu-ray player, extensive library of games, trailers, demos, extra content and movies to download
Motion control gamepad a good mix for a variety of games
Sony diligent about upgrading the software, improving it after purchase

PS3 Cons:

Later start and expensive hardware caused lowest sales
No Netflix access, despite web browser
Limited multiplayer interaction: Playstation Home has been a laughingstock

Truth: amazing, may be Tesla Roadster of consoles, ahead of its time and equal to or better than the next gen Wii and Xbox, especially if Sony keeps tweaking and upgrading software.

Xbox 360 Pros:

Out first, built a big lead
Innovative trophy system and other multiplayer features
Has Netflix (although this is no better than a $100 Roku box because of graphics limitations)

Xbox 360 Cons:

Rushed/sloppy - extremely high hardware failure rate, even in later models
Only 720p, no Blu-Ray (adds about $300 to cost to buy a Blu-ray player and still doesn't equal features of a PS3)
Best games are ports from PC franchises, which are cheaper (COD, GTA)
Backed HD-DVD, and only as an add-on
Poor design: console looks squashed, Xbox controller not made for human hands

Truth: A failure in slow motion. Microsoft is not a hardware company

Deconstructing Batman, Hon

2009-08-24T23:05:00.000-04:00

On the eve of the release of Batman: Arkham Asylum, which could very well be the best Batman game ever, and possibly the 2009 Game of the Year, I feel the urge to pontificate on the dark knight.

Batman has had his hokey periods, but with the Chris Nolan-Christian Bale reboot and the animated Batman series of recent years, the Dark Knight has improved greatly. (Batman: The Brave and the Bold series is a turn to the hokey, which is fine for my 6 year old, but Batman may as well fight dragons too, which he kind of does in that cartoon.)

But even the Chris Nolan take on Batman is a bit too unrealistic, as awesome as it is. The essence of Batman is that anyone could be him: no super powers, just focus, hard-work and brains. Batman is realistic. Chris Nolan's Batman is a white guy billionaire, fighting white guy villains (psychologists, drug dealers/mobsters, the Joker) because his parents were killed by another white guy. This seemed plausible in the 1930s (John Dillinger, Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, etc.) but today it sounds farfetched. (Maybe, if the Joker was the billionaire, or a talk show host.)

Take the billionaire thing first: being a billionaire is a superpower, even if it is a hyperrealistic power. Even Superman needs a job to pay the bills. Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne don't have to do squat. Bruce Wayne could just bulldoze whatever neighborhoods he thought were crime ridden.

Next, his motivation rings false: a child orphaned like Bruce Wayne would probably be wrapped in a blanket of therapy, treatment, sycophants, and doing something else with one's life. Do you know how much trauma rich kids are subject to, but don't put on a cape and cowl? Look at the Kennedy's or kids of music or film stars. Why didn't Carrie Fisher become BatGirl and beat up men who cheated on their wives? But becoming obsessed with criminals and crime is just a bit odd. We accept it with Batman because it is the origin story and has been retold so often, but it makes little sense.

Batman seems a bit picky about the crime he wars on. Bruce Wayne lives in a mansion outside the city; when he's in the city he's in the swanky parts. Most of the crime does not happen there (unless it's white collar crime, but apparently Bruce Wayne only goes after poorer criminals?) Does he punch out drug users, prostitutes, embezzlers, jaywalkers, undocumented workers, panhandlers, people driving with suspended licenses and corrupt building inspectors? It would be dramatic for Batman to take down a Ken Lay-Bernie Ebbers type or a deadbeat dad. But someone bending contracting regs down at City Hall? No.

Finally, race. One look at Batman and you know he is a 6'2" white guy with blue eyes, fighting urban street crime in parts of town that he has no connection with. Does that sound likely? Would he be well received by the Black, Asian and Hispanic residents? Put it another way, what if he were a partially disguised Black man fighting crime in Oslo, Norway? He may be easy to track down, is all I'm saying. And it would be a bit odd, don't you think?

A modern Batman ought to be:

Black and/or Hispanic
Fighting crime he grew up around
Have limited resources
Only fight certain crimes, and for a particular reason (possibly morally-compromised)
Less like the Punisher, more like a ninja Sherlock Holmes
Built less like a linebacker and have more martial arts and stealth skills
Based in Baltimore, which has Gotham-like problems, but its buildings are relatively low and it is kinda weird, so Batman would fit in.

I've stopped drinking

2009-08-19T20:59:00.002-04:00

Sugary drinks, that is. Not alcohol, although on the cruise I did have a sip of both rum (while on a pirate ship) and champagne (on a cruise ship) because you're supposed to try things at times like that. And didn't like either: they are bitter, like grapefruit, which reminds me of vomit-inducing medicines people give kids to convince them to swallow the pill form instead. Escargot: thumbs up. Alcoholey drinks: yecch.

As part of my contribution to the health care reform, much like the discounts that drug companies and health insurance companies promising to create billions of savings, I have given up drinking sugary drinks. Sugary drinks are supposed to be very bad for health, adding empty calories, inducing too much eating, bad for teeth, etc.

Of course, like the drug and health insurance industry, there's no way for the President to hold me to this, but really, I'm doing it more for me than for the country.

Let's review the various parts of the beverage industry that I will be personally ruining and causing job losses in:

Lemonade
Pineapple juice
Orange juice
Orange soda
Sprite
Sarsaparilla
Root beer

With spiraling health care costs, either the cookies or the sugary drinks had to go. Note that I've already dropped almost all high fructose corn syrup, so these are actual sugary drinks (except Sprite). Anything put up against a good cookie will lose. Tasty, tasty, tasty. The drinks will be missed, but all is not lost.

I've found something that is a pretty neat substitute. When you take the sugary drinks, like orange juice, out of your taste palate, the natural sugar of fruits and veggies stands up and drills your sweet tooth. Say hello to my little sugary friends:

Sweet potato
Red peppers
Grapes
Pineapple
Raisins
Cantaloupe
Pumpkin
Watermelon

Next target: french fries

Things I found out on my summer vacation

2009-08-15T22:41:00.004-04:00

I can survive several days without internet access: Twitter, email, Facebook, news sites, etc. I cannot survive several days without being able to read and do some writing.

I prefer waffles, especially Belgium waffles, to pancakes. Pancakes are hard to cook well: waffles are hard to screw up.

I bought nothing at the Lego Store, mostly because luggage space was tight. But I spent a crapload of money at the House of Blues store. This was unexpected.

I can eat eggs now. Scrambled eggs, omelets, egg pastries. No allergic reaction.

San Miguel in Cozumel, Mexico was exactly as I expected thanks to popular culture depictions of Mexico, from the buildings to the people, etc. The kicker was that I totally got the Mexican vibe.

Key West was what I expected, at least the western half. Not impressed. Sunburns and beer bottles and misogynistic t-shirts. Cool pirate museum and butterfly exhibits though.

Grand Cayman: I didn't see enough of to have an impression. I spent almost the whole time on a pirate ship and did walk the plank.

I need a swimshirt with long sleeves. The forearms took multiple coats of sunscreen and still got roasty.

Homo sapiens are splitting into two species: homo sapiens and homo sumo. I know and admire plenty of overweight and obese homo sapiens. But they are not homo sumo. I'm not making judgements here, just observing that it seems like we've hit a fork in the evolutionary road, because even the children of homo sumos look different. Maybe having seen Wall-E before going on the cruise had something to do with this thought.

Older kids are much easier to vacation with. We discovered a whole ton of stuff about the Disney Cruise that we didn't know about simply because our kids are older (spa and fitness center, etc.).

I think I met the actual Jack Sparrow and Peter Pan, not people playing them who were very much in character. The scary thing is that I think they each believed this more fervently than I did. Still, Disney characters are the best, even when it is in the 90s outside and hardly any one is looking.

The kids had a blast, and that was as enjoyable as any enjoyment I got out of it personally.

My better half is an amazing operations/logistics research talent. Having your wardrobe planned out by spreadsheet, and getting $54 flights to Orlando are two ways that she made everything go very smoothly.

I would SO go on a DC Comics-themed cruise.

Coming home on a Saturday afternoon is much better than at night, or any time on Sunday.

Our gold fish may very well be immortal.

Disney Cruise Line can and should continue to milk the pirate angle for all it is worth: they have cruise ships, their own Caribbean island, and they own the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Aye, they even have the Flying Dutchman anchored at the island. The only way to make it better would be to board and capture some of those ugly Carnival cruise ships: floating casinos on the Spanish Main? Savvy?

Forty years down the drain

2009-07-20T20:28:00.002-04:00

Today is the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. I have a great love for space exploration and for history. It truly was a remarkable achievement.

But it was 40 years ago. Two other big technological feats occurred in 1969: ARPANET, predecessor to the internet, got its first link and the Boeing 747 debuted. Both have had huge effects on American society. Will they be celebrated with as much pomp? No. Why? Because they were not the high water mark of network computing or aviation. The internet and a ton of other planes superceded these earlier iterations, and they don't have much hold on us.

We are about to take our brand new space station and destroy it because we don't know what to do with it and it is pricey. Very shortly we will have no space vehicle to launch people into space. This makes me reluctant to whoop it up over a 40 year old achievement that simply reinforces the embarrassment we have felt ever since. It's just sad.

Science fictional economics

2009-07-01T21:15:00.000-04:00

How can SF do well in movies, games and TV while getting crushed in the written arena? This has a lot of SF fans scratching their heads. To some extent, this is talking about similar but different products (movies versus books) that have different audiences.

Guys don't read as much as they used to. From kindergarten to college, a big chunk of the male population just dreads reading for whatever reason. No one quite knows why. SF is a male-heavy literary genre. It thrives in video games, movies and other more visual media.

Romance and fantasy, on the other hand, are the opposite. They are booming and have a heavily female following. Women read. Outside of Titanic, there are few mega-blockbuster romance movies.

So what is SF to do? Will it finally break out of its moat of maleness and embrace female readers?

Should it pull in more romance, more heartbreaking vampires, less explosions and Chuck Norris type characters?

Will it try to attract male readers back with ever more male-focused material like battles, alien worlds, hard science, etc.? Or maybe it will shift to the graphic novel arena; less words, more visuals.

Will it sink for decades, like comics did? Is this the end of the silver age then, and are we waiting for the SF Watchmen and Sandman or the 1989 Batman to blow off the cobwebs? Look at what JJ Abrams did with Star Trek: rebooted it in a way that made it better than the original while making it seem more real than the original.

Maybe SF has found its natural home in the blockbuster movie world, and its run in the literary realm is ending. Hell of a time to write a sci-fi novel, huh? And not even have it close to ready for submitting to agents. Argh.

Not thrilled with the king of crotch-grab

2009-06-28T20:29:00.003-04:00

So, for all 0.5 of you following this blog, I'm know you are just dying to know what I think about Michael Jackson and his death. As for anyone, I'm sorry to hear that he died when he had so much more planned to do.

As for my opinion of him as a performer, I was never a fan. I remember in 4th grade being the only kid who didn't think that the Thriller album was any good. The Thriller video was even more underwhelming: I heard how scary it was and it looked like a cheesy horror film put to a pop song. I thought Jackson was pretentious, showy and found his voice irritating. The only song I ever warmed to was "Man in the Mirror" and if someone remade it without his voice, it would be 1,000 times better.

Now that he died of what was likely a drug overdose, we can see his whole catalog and his effect on pop culture. And it amounts to: meh. He was a star of the 70s and 80s, huge for a time, like Pac-Man and Different Strokes. But he left the scene by the late 80s, eclipsed by his own sister on the current music scene by the early 90s.

Always lurking was the freak show. He was a rolling freak show of freak shows, with the chimp, the plastic surgery, the hyperbaric sleeping chamber, marrying Lisa Marie Presley, Neverland, the first child molestation charges, his second marriage, dangling his child over a balcony, the second child molestation charges and so on. And let's not forget what started the freak show: the crotch-grabbing. Ah yes, the non-sexual but not asexual crotch grab that made one think that an emaciated banana republic dictator with a Liberace streak really needed some jock itch cream.

Here are some of the music artists from the same era who have had a longer lasting effect, a greater effect on pop culture and had longer careers than Michael Jackson:
Elton John
Madonna
Billy Joel
Rod Stewart
Led Zeppelin
Bruce Springsteen
John Mellencamp
U2
Tony Bennett
Aerosmith
The Rolling Stones
Paul McCartney

Their music will outlive them. All anyone will remember about him is the molestation charges/trials, etc. When was the last time any Gen Xer fans of him even bothered to listen to his stuff? His crap doesn't even reach the level of Patrick Swayze's "She's like the wind" on 80s radio stations.

I know, you're about to throw all the press attention his death got back in my face. Whoopee, Nixon got good press when he died in 1994. Princess Diana, well, let's not discuss her.

Thinking about Ps & Qs: Pitches and Queries

2009-06-21T21:43:00.000-04:00

In the previous post I mentioned that I attended a panel on how to pitch your project to agents, editors, etc. Here are the highlights (almost a month late):

Neal Levin, publisher: He admitted that it's hard for writers to reach him when he gets about 250 queries a month. And he had three book pitches at Balticon that day, including one he implied came from the author sitting next to me, James Daniel Ross.

Nancy Greene, author: She related many of the ups and downs of querying and if I remember correctly, she stressed tailoring queries to agents with different interests and likes/dislikes.

David J. Williams, author: Had a lot of great tips, which he noted can be found here. Namely, avoid the query letter meatgrinder if possible and try to talk to agents face to face if you don't know anyone in the biz. He has a copy of the query letter that worked for him. It's about 90% describing the story, 10% credentials and 0% wasted words.

Jonathon Mayberry, author: has taught classes in how to query and had the most to say. He mentioned a Maberry formula that goes as such:
1. Name protagonist and crisis
2. Appeals to readers of...
3. Credentials

His site with a sample query letter and other advice and tips is here.

Lessons from authors at Balticon 43

2009-05-30T08:46:00.000-04:00

Outside of my Balticon panel coverage in the previous post, I had a couple of interactions with authors that led me to important insights.

Charles Stross was the Guest of Honor (GoH) and I both talked with him and went to his Q&A. I also follow his blog quite closely and this is an amalgamation of all of things he has said in all of these venues that were either directed at me or could have been had I been standing in front of him, annoying him as he spoke or wrote them.

For some reason, when he discusses writing, he breaks it down in a way that makes the process sound unmysterious and so damn feasible. See his post at Tor.com about how he gets ideas stresses how easy it is if you are naturally curious and not working too hard at it. The submarine bit in The Jennifer Morgue he got from a real-life documentary about just such a thing. His rules for stealing ideas is to steal from the best and make sure they are clearly dead (but do not murder them).

He writes SF for geeks who he thinks didn't have an author writing for them. SF has been dominated by speed and power, he says, rocket engineers and frontier types. It's nearly a mature art, though and he seemed to hint that it's time may have passed, or at least the common tropes need to get replaced. His latest novel, Saturn's Children, pretty much screams that SF needs to reorient to something more meaningful and timely than interplanetary work commutes, aliens, time travel and terraforming.

His Laundry novels he just has so much fun writing and it makes it easier for him and more enjoyable. Another point in the 'do what you love' column.

He is a real geek, much more so than I. He's a fiction geek almost like Spielberg is a film geek. Something for me to aspire to.

I got an inkling that social science fiction may not be for the real geek crowd. Charlie (can I call you that, Mr. Stross?) and I had a short debate over whether increasing social complexity is a good thing or not, that I think I need to continue further, if he'll indulge me. But that aside, if no one in the shrinking sci-fi world even gets much social science, or has much interest, then my stuff is not headed toward the right place.

Stephanie Draven is a friend of mine from high school days, who probably associates with me against her better judgment given all that she and her sister know about me from back in the day. She is a recently published author with an agent, and a book deal and deadlines and contracts. Things that I learned or knew but she reinforced in my head include:

SF literature is having a hard time while romance and fantasy are doing well, in an industry that overall is doing badly. Escapist fiction seems to be doing very well, even while science fiction does well at the box office and on TV. People are drawn to fantasy for some reason in print, especially if there be vampires or bodice-ripping. Meanwhile, rivets, outer space, aliens and lasers work well visually: go figure.

Dumb down my pitches. Way down. I made a pitch that referenced Tom Friedman's pop social science classic about globalization: The Lexus and the Olive Tree. No one at the writer's workshop expressed any recognition of it. I tried other pitches out that mentioned Malcolm Gladwell's books and others. She kept shaking her head patiently, motioning to bring it down more. I stopped before I got to Captain Underpants. Apparently, it's not too hard to go above the heads of publishing acquisition folks and the marketing department.

She also boosted my confidence that Scrivener is the way to go for a writing project software. I bought it shortly afterwards, which I had been planning on doing, but did so with gusto, folks.

Balticon 43 Report

2009-05-24T20:41:00.004-04:00

Things I learned at Balticon 43: (yes, it's not done yet, but still)

Hard science for beginners: Dr. Cmar, a friend of mine, was on a panel with three physicist types and they fielded audience questions. I was hoping it would be a good old 'hard' vs. 'soft' science battle, but it was more of really well informed physics geeks trying to stump older physicist geeks about MHDs, string theory, dark matter, etc. I'm below the level of a physics beginner, and it was only interesting to find out some interesting sources for beginners. And poor Cmar only got to mention syphilis once or twice.

Writer's Workshop:
I was the only sci-fi writer in the room; everyone else is or has been focused on fantasy.
My one line Hollywood pitch failed miserably in part because of point #1. I referenced a New York Times Bestseller that no one had heard of. More about that later.

Pitch panel:
Excellent. Jonathon Maberry has taught how to pitch projects, the moderator actually moderated, Neal Levin is a publisher who gave his perspective. How to pitch a project in a business sense is different than the artistic argument and how to handle subgenre, buzzwords, structure the query letter, etc. were very insightful.

AI panel:
Mostly a review of how it has been used in sci-fi (robot, computer, augment) and a little about how close to real-life it could get. It was okay.

Psychohistory Update:
Nathan Bos from Applied Physics Lab wowed me not with the mind control and ESP stuff, but with the predicting the future stuff. Unfortunately it was towards the end and we only got a bit into the prediction markets and stuff before I had to bail. I may have to link up with him professionally as we may have social science modeling interests in common.

Games2U Truck: massive amounts of awesome, especially for my 6 yr old clone, who was tired and cranky when we approached it. He ended up having about an hour of fun playing Kung Fu Panda on an Xbox 360.

The conversations I had about writing with writers I'll get into in another post.

So what are you?

2009-05-06T21:02:00.002-04:00

The newest survey on Americans' religious preferences is out. Guess what? People who have no organized religion are still a growing proportion, and the percent of atheist/agnostic is up to 12%, 34% in Vermont. Catholics are shifting from the Northeast to the Southwest, probably because of immigration in the Southwest more than anything going on in the Northeast. ABC has a summary of the findings, but please ignore their asinine 'informal survey on Twitter.'

At the very least, the country is becoming much more pluralistic when it comes to religion, and that is a good thing. When a dominating majority of Americans were one flavor of Christian or another, everyone assumed everyone was. Now, it's harder to tell. People have to ask: what are you?

But even that question sounds a bit creaky and outdated. One phenomenon that has grown is Americans changing their religious affiliation. What are you implies that your religious ID is permanent and fixed. What do you believe? Or What do you call yourself? May be more apt.

And finally, lets deal with the 'nones,' the 'seculars,' the atheist/agnostic/unsure catchall. Atheist is the new gay, as evidenced by the polling data that it has overtaken race as the thing parents don't want to find in their children's significant other. As gay marriage is approved by a new state every other week, atheism has become the new gay. But it may not last very long in that spot.

Somehow, in a hurry, the U.S. is joining Western Europe as a more open, tolerant, polyglot society. It seems to be driven by 'the young people' which our press subtly implies is anyone under age 45.

While waiting for the bus recently, I was talking with a friendly middle-aged, self-identified Jewish woman who is reading Chris Hitchens' book God is not Great. She found the book interesting, and not threatening to her beliefs. I haven't read the book, but read reviews and debates about it, and was able to chat about it a bit. The interesting part is she never asked me: so what are you? That is some real progress.

Cross the streams

2009-04-26T16:56:00.002-04:00

I was recently reminded that one area of life can easily feed into another, if you let it. As Egon once said in Ghostbusters, it's time to cross the streams.

Writing a document involves several different tasks: organizing and gathering the information, writing, rewriting, producing the text, making notes, etc. But a word processor can only help with the production of the text. It won't help you collect all of your research so it is in one place, it won't help you format the document, it won't help you re-organize the document as you rewrite it.

At work, I have been using integrated development environments for coding projects, where everything one needs to get the work done is collected in one place. The idea is that you can devote the maximum amount of effort to getting work done instead of switching between windows, trying to find that note you had somewhere, or re-finding that research material you put... somewhere.

So why not apply the efficiency from the programming world to the writing one? Brilliant.

I think I'm leaning toward this creative writing software program for that part of my life. More about finding one for work later.

Word choice

2009-04-12T07:54:00.003-04:00

All my life, word choice has mattered to me. I would get confused by imprecise directions, poorly explained ideas or rules, etc. I appreciate the precise language of the law and philosophy which others regard as picky hair-splitting. I adore the well crafted phrase, the muscular verb, the witty Twitter tweet.

There are the words and phrases that are cheese graters on my ears because of the emptiness or the evil intent:
going forward
in order to
the impact of
nonbeliever, nonreligious
sexist and racist epithets

Some folks are mightily upset by profanity, which is taken to be either unspeakably rude, mean-spirited, inarticulate or showing lack of character. A lot of it is scatological, and anything referring to the human body is considered off limits by some. This is a front, as I challenge anyone to be offended by my wife's use of the phrase "bladder of steel" to describe Micro Trackball's limited bathroom-going. Or George W. Bush's nickname for his advisor Karl Rove: "Turd Blossom." May have been a lousy President, but he has some word choice chops.

I find it odd that a shorthand reference to a penis is not objected to and is casually used or has multiple meanings (dork, cock, dong, scumbag, has balls, etc.) while any reference to a vagina (including the word 'vagina') is treated with an awed horror akin to yelling "Voldemort" in the middle of Hogwarts. It is the Organ that Shall Not be Named. People may cringe when someone says you 'throw like a girl,' but call anyone a 'pussy' and there's likely to be a fight. And of course the non-slang, scientific term 'clitoris' makes people pass right the fuck out.

As you can guess, profanity doesn't bother me. When a little kid wearing a backpack angrily calls Hancock an 'asshole' at the beginning of the movie 'Hancock' it nailed my funny bone hard. Why? There is brutal honesty in that, and there's no better way to convey how low public opinion of Hancock has fallen at that point in the story. And I bet that kid loved filming that scene. Profanity is just another toolbox of words that, when used in the right amounts, can do something nothing else can. Some people can be offended by any and everything, so tread carefully.

What about politically correct speech? My rule here is that if a group wants to be called "Native Americans" and object to other labels or monikers, then we should respect that. And they can change their minds whenever they want and we should go with that. After all, if I introduce myself as Trackball, I don't want to be called "Brainless." And if people change their names when they get married, it's stupid and rude to refer to them by their previous names.

So watch your word choice.

The revolution will not be printed

2009-03-18T21:20:00.000-04:00

As a professional nonfiction producer, voracious consumer and amateur fiction producer of written communication, I can sense a shift coming in how we communicate with words. Some of this is driven by the death of print journalism (h/t Warren Ellis) as newspapers and magazines and short fiction markets shrink and die. Some of this is prompted by the rise of e-books and DRM-free pdfs given away or sold by authors. Some of this is pushed by online only journalism sites (Engadget, Politico, TMZ come to mind).

Some of this is spurred by how professional written products seem to be more potently condensed than they used to be. I suspect that news articles of the future may look something like this:

End of Hero Films?

Aquaman Reboot Tanks
Underwater love scene gets laughs
Studios turn to lucrative Thai action pics

I'm not sure if I am bothered by this to some extent. In a faster-moving society like ours, we are getting better at time management. The above bullet blurbie thing will suit most people out there who really don't want to know what Aquaman Resurfaces' director thinks about his bomb.

Long-form journalism, nonfiction and fiction are not going anywhere, so don't worry, all of you long-form producers. People still want that kind of writing, but the delivery channels are probably in a phase transition. No one knows how it will shake out, but the journey to that point will probably be pretty interesting.

The truth about Jar Jar Binks

2009-03-02T21:24:00.001-05:00

The Phantom Menace came out a decade ago and there are plenty of geeks my age who are still pissed about the very existence of Jar Jar Binks. Yes, the Jamaican-accented clumsy Gungan, who bumbles, fumbles and ultimately is Palpatine's stooge.

The ironic thing is, my 6 year old son considers Jar Jar harmless comic relief. That good ole Jar Jar, talking funny like Yoda, but not serious, even about himself. He's good for a few gags. His appeal to kids is obvious and Lucas' point to some extent. Almost any Cartoon Network series has a buffoon character somewhere and why? Because he makes the other characters and the audience feel more competent. And 30-something geeks who had hoped to relive their childhoods at a Star Wars movie need to get a grip. You dug the Ewoks and Jawas, right? At least the Gungans managed to build beautiful cities, rather than treehouses and rolling lunch boxes.

The truth is that JJ Binks moves the plot along and is visually interesting. It's funny that he is an outcast among his own people. He gives the Queen the idea for allying with the Gungans by showing how even goofy morons can be of aid sometimes, like when they are taken seriously. And he manages to help defeat the droid army at the end of Phantom.

But he is not the most annoying and useless character in the Star Wars movies. No, that honor belongs to... you guessed it... C-3PO. Yes, I loved him too as a character, but he was completely useless and a gaping plot hole. Why didn't Artoo have a vocalizer? Rockets in his legs, holographic projector, computer interface and a blue shocky thing, but can't vocalize Basic? If Artoo could speak, there would be no need for Threepio. A protocol droid? Built by Anakin? Why didn't Anakin build Artoo? Artoo, like the Jawas and Ewoks, appealed to kids. Threepio appealed to no one.

And he's a prissy worrywart English butler, as Lucas intended. Not a cool English butler, like Batman's Alfred Pennyworth. Did you notice that everyone in Star Wars with an English accent is an Imperial? Except Threepio. Maybe if Threepio turned out to be an Imperial spy and went HAL on the Millenium Falcon and Han Solo, that would have justified his existence. Maybe if there was some reason he had to store the Death Star plans. But no, he's just an idiot slowing everyone else down.

There were only three good moments with Threepio: when he was shot to pieces in Cloud City, when Jabba backhanded him, and when Salacious Crumb pulled his photoreceptor (eye) out. The outraged/scared/worried Threepio gag got old by, uh, let's see, the Sand People attack on Luke in New Hope. When he advises Luke and Ben to leave him behind, they should have looked at each other, shrugged, and pitched his goldbricking ass down another sand dune. Hell, Luke tried to give him away in Jedi (you knew he wasn't really giving away Artoo because he had Luke's lightsaber), and I don't recall Leia mentioning him in her holographic message. Shit, even Artoo seemed surprised to see Threepio again on Jabba's sail barge, and you know he was thinking, "What the hell is wrong with Jabba? The old Jabba would have melted down this pain in ass to make a doorknob or something. Can't trust anyone any more."

Finally, the Clone Wars cartoon series recently had an episode "Bombad Jedi" that paired C-3PO with Jar Jar. And guess what, C-3PO is a nattering moron, and Jar Jar, by comparison, looks like an action hero.

Scrubbing the toilet bowl of the soul

2009-02-21T11:51:00.002-05:00

If I were prone to dispensing folksy wisdom, I would say "I reckon a man who scrubs his own toilet has no choice but to be honest with himself." Or to put it in Shakespearean terms: To thine own bowl scrub true, for as the flush follows the brush, thoust canst be false to oneself.

It's hard to believe that you are farther up the ladder than anyone else. It shows that your willing to do the dirty work like anyone else. It is also a good anecdote for a swollen ego, lying to yourself, believing your infallibility or any other kinds of folly.

Not that this happens to me a lot. But this can be an acquired personality flaw among college-educated white collar workers who have never worked in a blue collar job and may believe they have never actually touched a toilet (ya know, the foot flushers).

If you really want a heavy dose of modesty, take apart the toilet seat that a 5 year old boy has tortured with a thorough and repeated urine soak and clean each part. Of course, urine is a natural disinfectant, and sailors used to clean their clothes in it (back in the wooden ship days when no one smelled good). Anyway, you could say I was real humble yesterday.

Why haven't I posted for the last month?

2009-02-07T09:52:00.003-05:00

Is it because I have been busy with both work and writing and, ya know, life? Yes.

Is it because the increasing number of people I'm following on Twitter, like Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, Brent Spiner, John Hodgman, Levar Burton, Leo Laporte, etc., has made that a bigger time suck? Yes, but an excellent return on investment for geek knowledge.

Is it because I have been fixing various tax payment problems that may preclude me from being confirmed as President Obama's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Cursor Moving Devices at the nascent Department of Geek Affairs? No comment.

Is it because some discretionary time has been chewed up by Micro Trackball's Super Smash Bros. Brawl obsession? Yes.

Is it because I have been getting ready for two Feb./March birthdays which require much research and planning? Yes.

Is it because of the economic downturn? No, but if you want to use that excuse, go for it. It's very much in vogue right now to 'tighten your belt' and make other people miserable because you want to fit in with people who really have it bad.

Is it because January is a boring, miserable, full of extra laundry, piece of shit month? Yes.

Is it because I have been putting together an application for Clarion 2009 in sunny San Diego this summer? Sadly, no.

The truth about geek groupies

2009-01-07T22:26:00.001-05:00

I'd love to be a real geek, but I just lack certain chops. Some of you may think that I am all geek, but that is probably more a testament to your lack of geekiness than any reflection on me. I tag along with real geeks, and my ungeekiness is demonstrated by how much I learn from them.

Like the funny cool geek chops of BadGods, xkcd, and of course Penny Arcade. I can't be funny like that. In the food chain of humor, geeks make those less geeky than them laugh, and those less geeky people can make even lesser geeky people laugh, and so on.
Like hearing ten minute blow-by-blows of decades old D&D battles, understanding exactly what they are talking about, but never having gone that far with role-playing games. My almost geekiness leaves me with lame The Chris Farley Show-esque responses and weak-ass tales of playing the Ghostbusters or Star Wars RPGs.
Like finding incredibly pithy funny tweets that manage to include cool D&D references to modern subjects, but not be able to produce my own.
Like fearing that the Comic Book Store guy may try talking comic to me when I'm buying the kids comics, which will force me to divulge that I have almost enough comics/superhero knowledge to be completely stupid about any of it.
Like going to a Ren Fest, sci-fi con or ComiCon and realizing that some people have put way more effort into it than I could ever scrounge up.
Like following real geeks on Twitter and the internutz and finding out about the latest geek tech, geek memes and snarky geek asides.
Like knowing real geeks who clue me into comics by Patton Oswalt and awesomest gadgets like Apple's MacBook Wheel.

There are certain classes of geek, and the list below indicates I don't rank above a level 1 wannabe in any of them:
Physical sciences geek: I never took physics, chemistry was a nightmare and if there is an opposite to mechanical or engineering ability, it's me. I married into this category, but that doesn't count. What's an integral?
Programming geek: I only really program in SAS. No Perl, Python, much less C languages or anything else. Trying to learn C# doesn't count yet. I don't sudo anything in Linux either.
Gadget geek: I'm too cheap.
Sci-fi/fantasy lit geek: My eclectic tastes and no fantasy desire leaves me wanting. More about this later.
Sci-fi movie/TV geek: I can do okay here sometimes (I saw the Star Wars Christmas Special), except have never seen Dr. Who, Stargate SG: Cthulhu, Babylon 5 or Lost. So, uh, no.
Mechanical geek: I can barely operate a Swiss Army knife. No homemade pumpkin guns, no self-built gaming rigs or PS3 supercomputers.
Gaming geek: so many games, too little time. And first person shooters are not my thing. See Penny Arcade above for the real deal.
Lego Geek: have never been to Brickfair in DC and my building skills can't produce something like this.

Maybe all geeks feel inadequate compared to one another. Maybe, as Qui-Gon put it, "there's always a bigger geek." The truth is that I am a geek groupie. So if you are a real geek, thanks for letting me tag along and bask in your reflected glow of geekiness. As a geek, you probably haven't received that kind of attention before. Enjoy it. I'm not going anywhere.

The truth about commercialism, gluttony and peace on Earth

2008-12-26T08:17:00.002-05:00

The truth is that it is all good. If some aspect of it makes you happy, go with it. By the same token, can we enjoy this happy time of year without bemoaning aspects of it that don't seem sufficiently pure?

Commercialism is cool: who doesn't like getting new things they have wanted? In our house, it's like everyone has a second birthday on Christmas. People in my house put off getting things they want for months leading up to Christmas, so getting the items is quite the thrill. But at least no one goes around complaining that others are not being commercial enough.

Gluttony is glorious. Being post-food myself, this doesn't matter much to me. Actually this is one area where no one really objects that much. I guess, given my food rants in the past, I would be the one to say something like 'hey, does an obese country really need this?' but since Christmas isn't only about food, it's not that big a deal. There are people who do complain that others are not gluttonizing enough, and they need to chill.

Peace is positive. Just let go the whole 'this is only about my religion alone'. Christians attempting to own Christmas are being silly because underneath their claims is the historical fact that their guy was born in spring or summer. Every faith and culture has a winter holiday, and if they didn't, they made sure to get themselves one. Come one, come all.

In the immortal words of Sheryl Crow, if it makes you happy, it can't be that bad. So live it up, because January and February are coming, and they blow chunks.

Trackball heaven: is this the Lair's future?

2008-12-01T21:51:00.000-05:00

See the 7 Logitech trackballs! See the 8 screens (4 suspended) in the front-viewing-area-thingie?

The next step for the Lair 1.0 is to fill that big empty expanse on the desk. Oh, come on, don't act surprised. Did you think that I would never want to play any games in the Lair? I would want it to look like a slightly less insane and majorly less cluttered version of this.

I'm not saying I would ever construct something like this, but check out this from a Yahoo! Games article on a guy who plays 36 World of Warcraft characters at the same time on 11 computers. It's called multiboxing, because he has a separate account for each one. That's one way to have a grand time without any friends!

But let's focus on the hardware here, people, okay? Here's another look:

(Any insinuation or accusation that this computing gear orgy is shown here in part to make anything I want to do seem minor by comparison is spurious, scurrilous and preposterous.)

The truth about me and football fandom

2008-11-13T21:20:00.002-05:00

Beginning in 1984, I swung from mild apathy toward pro football to rabid interest. I watched the San Francisco 49ers offense glide through the season in such a groove that I was shell-shocked. Joe Montana was so cool, in the zone, and he spread the ball around everywhere. The offense's timing and execution was brilliant: I had never seen a group of people act so closely in concert. And the D was tough, led by the hard-hitting Ronnie Lott.

I began to pay attention to all the exciting football going on during that era: the epic Giants-49ers duels, Bo Jackson, LT, run and shoot, the hapless Oilers and Bills and Patriots. But a perfectly thrown pass, a Barry Sanders juke or a Ronnie Lott hit are things of beauty. I played Tecmo Bowl, Tecmo Super Bowl and Tecmo Super Bowl III (Special Edition) and knew every roster. I played Front Page Sports Football Pro, made my own playbook, built my own league based on historical NFL teams (Rochester Jeffersons, anyone?), etc.

Lately, the fan-focused fantasy football has really ruined much of my interest. The sport is no longer about teams and group psychology, it's about players' individual performances. Most of the fans now root only for the running back on one team and the wide receiver on the other because of their league. Do they care which team wins so long as their guys rack up the points? Yes, fanta-football allows the fans to participate more, in a Vegas sense, but it tackles the idea of it being a team sport.

Free agency has killed football too. Players are not together long enough to learn the playbook and play together. The constant shuffling of players due to injuries, which are way too common, and free agency means that there are no more offensive or defensive philosophies. One season a team has an aggressive D, the next they are on their heels because their explosive linebacker is on IR. Coaches have become just a front office tool seemingly along for the ride, but no longer in control of much.

This has brought parity to the NFL, but also a lot of boredom. Yes, you may not know who will win any given game, but who cares? A lot of games look like the quality of NFL Europe. And there are no dominant teams. Most cycle between mediocre and abysmal, with little reason for the change. Other teams go on a run for one season, and then stink up the place the next. Going from 6-10 to 10-6 to 6-10? Come on, it's random chance. The Super Bowl winners seem to be drawn randomly any more.

Maybe it is me. I just don't have the desire to sit through 3 hours of a game. At 58:00 into a close Monday Night Game, I turned it off. Just wasn't worth the effort. Either way, I'm done with pro football. I'll spread my very low attention to sports more evenly among them.

But, I have to admit, playing the old Tecmo Super Bowl on the web (see link above) was fun. My 1991 49ers beat the 1991 Bills 36-28 (yeah, the controls were hard to get the hang of).

Macllenium Falconbook

2008-10-19T14:56:00.005-04:00

The truth is, I don't know what to make of Apple anymore.

The MacBook's hard drive died midway of this past week. I was angry, frustrated and ready to chuck the thing and go get a cheapie netbook. There have been a number of other problems with this computer in the past. But it is only 2.5 yrs old. The chipping plastic topcase I could live with, but a dead MacBroke is no good.

Worst, I lost about two weeks worth of work on the novel. Yes, it was backed up, but I generally back up once a month or so. Oh, and I should mention that those were two really good weeks. I had finished going through the novel completely and was revisiting sections I flagged for needing more work. It was starting to feel like the end stage of a draft where I feel like all I can do is mess it up. Also, I had a bunch of 'stickies', notes to myself on lots of stuff, that are now gone forever.

I took the MacBroke to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store. Got there 1/2 hour earlier than my appointed time, but they took me early. (It was three days after HDD death that I could get the reservation: I don't know what this says about the volume of problems and repairs going on with Apple products.) They diagnosed that the HDD was D-E-D dead, which meant the files were lost. But because there was a run of bad drives a while back, this was a beyond warranty freebie for me.

When they tested the new drive, the hardware test failed on a temperature sensor, no doubt a leftover problem from the heat fan death problem from last year. That, and the topcase, will be repaired for free when I take it back in. But they got the computer back to me on the same day.

I have to say that I was floored. I figured that I would be out $50-100 on a new drive and another $100 for labor or whatever. But the Apple service was excellent, especially in fixing problems where they could have shrugged off culpability like any other corporation or tried to squeeze me for some more money. ("Mark, your flux capacitor also looks like it might go. That will be another $300.")

It has cost me nothing to have this computer fixed yet. $0. Beyond the original price, all I've spent is about $80 to quadruple the RAM. It may very well be a lemon that needs a Wookie to bang on it with a hydrospanner once in a while, but it has it where it counts: the technical support.

I write to you today on the MacBook, while it is in between stops at the Genius Bar. So far, so good. It flies once again, but every time I pull the hyperdrive lever, my heart jumps into my throat.

Oh, and the new MacBooks? Totally awesome. The glass trackpad with NO buttons is pure genius. If they put one into the MacBook Air 2.0, whenever that comes around, I would be hard-pressed to ignore it as a possible successor to the whitest hunk of junk in the galaxy.

Applesauce Bar stands at 55% apple awesomeness, 45% watery hype.

Out-parented by a 9 year old

2008-10-10T21:19:00.002-04:00

I don't usually talk about the smaller Trackballs, but you'll see there's no harm done in this post.

My son was in the tub, washing his hair, while I worked with his older sister on fractions, divisions and decimals outside the bathroom. He started crying and yelling. I checked on him and he said that he got shampoo in his eyes.

So I told him to lay back in the water and get the shampoo off his head and out of his eyes. I gave him a washcloth to clean off his face. He just kept crying.

In rushes his sister, who takes the washcloth, tells him it's okay, soothes him, and starts cleaning his face. This 9 year old girl went completely into mom mode.

I stood there, useless.

And yes, she calmed him down, got the shampoo off his face and hair. I doubt she even noticed what she was doing. I stood there in awe. Kudos to Mini Trackball.

The truth about the word 'oral'.

2008-09-20T13:24:00.005-04:00

I was recently reminded at work about how we regularly misuse the word 'oral'. In this case, it was a job description that mentioned giving 'oral presentations' and 'written and oral' something or others.

Now, I will admit that using the word oral or orally to refer to something spoken is completely allowed by dictionaries and common usage. It's just that I think it's time to change that.

When people hear the word 'oral' or orally, they think of two things, and neither has to do with verbal or spoken communication. They have to do with a person's mouth. The first, which I'm sure jumped into your brain the second you read this post's title is, well, I'll get to that in a second. The second thing you thought of is health care related to the mouth. Oral hygiene, oral care, Orajel, take this medication orally, etc. It's a nice clinical description for the mouth, and it covers the teeth, tongue, gums, etc. It doesn't refer to the voice box, which actually produces the words. You can measure body temperature with a thermometer orally or anally. Come to think of it, the word 'oral' is a nice compliment to 'anal'. The intake and the exhaust portals, if you will.

Which leads me back to the first thing you thought of regarding the word oral: oral sex. Come on, admit it. Not that there's anything wrong with thinking of oral sex first. It's not even your fault; the only time the word 'oral' gets used in the media anymore is to try to politely describe this act in as clinical a term as possible. Like crime reports, or newspaper articles, etc. Whenever one hears or reads the word 'oral' these days, one is fully expecting to hear it followed by 'sex.'

That's why it makes no sense to refer to spoken or verbal communication as oral. Oral belongs to health and sex now. It just does. So lets make a clean break. After all, we don't refer to written communication as 'manual' even though it has to be performed with the hands, one way or another. The hands are the means, the writing is the medium, and for communication, the medium matters. By the same token, referring to communication as something coming out of one's mouth is irrelevant; the mouth is just the means. The medium is the voice, the audio transmission: spoken or verbal. And verbal is never used in connection with clinical health (again, oral) or sexual contexts (it's called phone sex or pillow talk).

Verbal communication, not oral. Spread the word. Verbally, and in writing.

Update on the math journey in public school

2008-09-15T20:22:00.003-04:00

Last school year, I kept track of how many days math was missed in Minnie Trackball's 3rd grade. After a few weeks at the start of the year, she managed to have it nearly every day, until the end of school. Then it kind of just petered out.

Fourth grade has stepped things up in terms of homework and subject matter. Minnie has moved up a level in math and will be skipping 4th grade math for the most part. We are real proud of her and she's really excited. So far, the obligatory two weeks of no math, to do assessments and such, is over. Math class assignments and homework have started to flow.

The math changes are part of a trend we've noticed when it comes to school. As the academics increase, there is a sorting out that happens. The kids who put in the effort seem to be pulling ahead; the parents who were so bent on having a gifted kindergartner are becoming more realistic about what their kids can do, especially if they fall a bit behind. Grades and standardized test scores make things pretty clear. Sweat equity seems to be a growing factor in success at school. And that can only be a good sign.

Lair 1.0 Pics

2008-09-08T17:33:00.008-04:00

For your viewing pleasure:

The desk and chair: (the shiny stuff is vapor-lock that holds the insulation in and moisture out; the house was built that way and it is not a cool sci-fi effect that I put up)

The embryonic theater area and library (ignore the luggage shelf and storage container 'walls'):

Lair security courtesy of Star Trek and Star Wars models (an Incom T-65 X-Wing below):

The Pirate Lego sound stage:

The town is under attack:

By pirates at sea:

Apparently at night or a late, cloudy evening (sigh).

ISO modern supernatural baddies

2008-09-06T07:29:00.000-04:00

The humanized supernatural is a huge thing right now. Fantasy romances featuring vampires, werewolves, the undead, etc. are a big hit. Most of the focus is on vampires. The Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer features a teenage girl who falls for a vampire and it's sitting atop the Amazon best seller list. There are tons of other fiction genres that have leapt into supernatural angles to spice up old plots. Now HBO has a new series, True Blood, which is a Southern Gothic vamp soap opera.

As a result, vampires just don't seem that scary anymore. They are emotionally vulnerable, thoroughly humanized, even enviable. They have issues, personalities and goals. These angles are entertaining, but it reduces them in a way. In fact, all the supernatural monsters seem trite, played out, overused. Maybe we have humanized too much, or maybe the world has changed in a way that they no longer have a grip on us. We've turned them into another class of superheroes, really. Which may be cool, but it's not scary.

These types of things used to be scary, viscerally scary. The very thought of some supernatural monster would drive a spike of fear into your heart. They were tied to the old Joseph Campbell archetypes and represented threats to the very fabric of human society:

Vampires subvert morality, especially for women, and they are death incarnate.
Werewolves represent losing control, and the threat of spreading that loss of control.
Zombies represent a loss of personality, a loss of self that can't be stopped and is highly contagious. As rotting corpses, they also represent disease and death.
Witches are strong confident women with power over men, threatening the patriarchy.
Ghosts are the past come back to haunt the guilty

I think we need a new set of supernatural baddies that can actually scare us. I don't know what those baddies would be, but they should be things or beings that scare the crap out of us just by their very existence. In the next post I'm going to throw some ideas out about what those things might be.

That's just how I scroll

2008-08-23T10:31:00.007-04:00

You can surf your usual rounds of sites until your eyes bleed or your hand breaks off at the wrist from all the clicky-clicky. Staying on top of one's interest areas, keeping in touch with people, following the news and can seem endless and overwhelming. I can't stand to be uninformed, but am lazy enough to want the informing process to be fast and efficient. I suspect you do too. There is a better way.

I realize that I have arrived late to many innovations in this area, but am probably ahead of the curve for this blog's less geeky readers, so here we go. People sometimes express amazement that I know so much, but it's simply because I try to quickly find information. So I will detail how I do this and hopefully give you ideas on how to better manage your own info flows.

iGoogle: At the base of all this is The Google. I have a gmail account, this blog and a couple of other things from Google. It is all tied together by my iGoogle page: a web page custom designed to dump all the information I want, how I want it, in one place. iGoogle allows you to set up tabbed pages where you can house different types of information. And there's always a Google search box there if you need it. Check out the tech tab from my iGoogle page below:

The Home tab has my three main web communication tools: gmail inbox, Twitter and Google Reader. I rarely interact with these three programs outside of this home tab. I've made the tab my home page, so whenever I fire up The Firefox, I see email, twitter and new blog posts all on one screen, along with weather, calendar, Google docs and a few other things. There's a theme of background photos that I set to put a pic of Hawaii that matches the time of day. The Tech tab has a Matrix background: yes, each tab has a pic that matches the theme.

Google Reader is a program that avoids the endless clicking among all the blogs you want to follow to see if any has a new post. You 'subscribe' to the blogs you want to by searching for them. The reader will show you all of the unread posts from any of those blogs, and will let you read them right there in the Reader.

RSS feeds: Tired of clicking from the New York Times, to your hometown rag, to Weather.com, and then back to NYT to check for breaking news? You can add gadgets that have feeds from all over the web on one tab. The screenshot above shows that I have both Gizmodo and Engadget RSS feeds on my Tech tab. While at most you get a handful of headlines, you can click on the title bar and go directly to the website if you want in a separate window.

There's many other ways to create webpages that house your customized nozzle on the firehose of web content. I'm just showing you how I scroll. Your mileage may vary.

Passing the Bechdel Test

2008-08-17T10:51:00.003-04:00

Charles Stross, sci-fi writer extraordinaire, references a test for misogyny in movies, courtesy of a comic strip by Alison Bechdel (who credits someone named Liz Wallace). The test is:

1) there are at least two female characters
2) who talk to each other about
3) something other than men.

Charlie applied this test to his own fiction and found that some of it passed, and some of it didn't. He has sworn to pay more attention to how female characters are portrayed, even at the expense of possibly turning his work into movies.

Since I have much less fiction to test than Charlie (and that is the closest this fanboy will ever come to comparing himself with Mr. Stross), this was much easier to check. Crashpoint Cascade, the novel in progress, passes. There are at least two scenes off the top of my head that meet the test, and ironically, none of the women in the first scene are in the second. I made a point of having as many female characters in the novel as male, in part because the story has some utopian elements, including more gender equity, but more importantly, because those characters just are female, just like some are angry, some are happy, some are evil and some are good.

Making the right choices subconsciously or unintentionally

2008-08-11T20:00:00.001-04:00

Back when I was younger, I felt like I could go into any of a number of different careers. My guidelines in choosing a career were simple: I didn't pay much attention to earnings potential, industry growth, portability, advancement or even scheduling. I was all about what interested me, what I excelled at.

In retrospect, I really lucked out. At one point, I seriously toyed with pursuing journalism. I was the editor of my high school newspaper and even did Journalism Explorers and got to hang out at the local paper's newsroom. Journalism was always a low paid, badly scheduled career. I chose not to go that route because I got more interested in public policy. Twelve years later, the journalism field is collapsing as its business plan falls apart. Media organizations are hemorraging money and journalists have been laid off in droves. Plus, the pay and hours still suck. Good choice on me.

I also toyed with joining the legal profession. Even did Law Explorers in high school, got to hang with real attorneys and judges and excelled at a mock trial. Took constitutional law in college and liked it. But it just didn't excite me, the pre-laws in college were irritating and as Tom Hanks once put it, being a lawyer means having homework all the time. Plus the hours suck, the hourly pay can be pretty bad, but it is highly portable. Fair choice on me.

I went into public policy expecting low to moderate pay, no portability and lousy hours. Most policy jobs involve horrible hours in exchange for doing really important (or seemingly important) work. The burnout rate is pretty high. The pay turned out to be higher (especially on an hourly scale) than I expected, the portability is nearly nonexistent and the hours are manageable in some spots, like the spot I'm in. The burnout potential is there, but it's mostly because of the hours and work that turns out not to be important. I've avoided that for the most part. Good choice on me.

The funny thing about career choices is how some of your mildly held preferences bubble up and become more important over time. I was willing to trade off money for decent hours, and substance over appearance. I have the Gen X trait of wanting work/life balance.

Having a good amount of work experience now, to me there are few office jobs with crazy hours that seem remotely worth the tradeoff. Much of the time, the culture of 24/7 work is a perpetual fire drill done mostly for appearances' sake. Humans are not very productive beyond eight hours, other than in looking busy. Over time, it's that kind of work culture that increasingly I have found ridiculous.

This has so far kept me from toying with politics, software development and entertainment because of the lousy hours and work/life imbalance. But it's not a big deal, because those fire drill cultures drive me nuts. I like having down time each night, to vary my mental frequencies and recharge in one area while focusing on another. Good choice on me.

Digging to the truth

2008-07-21T20:28:00.002-04:00

So I'm still in a rewrite of Crashpoint Cascade. And I'm plowing through this scene, feeling itchy because it's not right. It's not immediate enough, it's like a rough draft that I hadn't noticed is a rough draft.

It's a scene around a picnic table, with a number of characters, some of them minor. One of them is trying to convince the rest to stick with him through a political crisis. So a few characters just pop up out of nowhere who were at the table the whole time but I just had not focused on them. And they start talking, pulling the scene in other directions.

Before I know it, the scene is going off the rails. I've got some new characters raising issues that don't fit, I don't know why they're saying things, where they're going with various positions and statements. Chaos. but some of it is interesting, and a little voice says not to throw those tidbits away.

And then I move a paragraph that had made the whole narrative disjunctive. And pieces start to fall into place. Motives appear, things start to make sense. I realize that the true scene was there all along, lurking somewhere in my subconcious. It needed to be pried out slowly and carefully. There's a process to make this happen. I must keep doing it and not rushing to get so many pages done per day.

30 Years later, the Trackball rolls into the Lair

2008-07-02T18:45:00.004-04:00

Today is the Trackball's birthday. It's funny that as one ages, that a whole bunch of old birthday traditions no longer have much interest while new ones appear.

The donut breakfast? The soda for lunch? The large amounts of cake, the favorite food for dinner? I'm post food (ignoring lunch today).
The money that financed summer entertainment? I'm self-financed and almost post money.
The Legos? I bring my own.
Celebrating the day on the day, regardless of how convenient? Now I wait for the weekend

It's not that the idea of the birthday has diminished as the birthdays rack up. The same level of excitement is there, it's just redirected to bigger objects. To the gift I have given myself: my own personal lair. A dream many years in coming true. It's 1.0, but it's done. Ever since seeing the Batcave as a 5 year old, I have wanted my own lair.

New birthday tradition: chilling out in your own personalized Lair.

Cardinal Glick meets his Invisible Avenger in the Sky

2008-06-24T14:21:00.003-04:00

While I was away at Sesame Place, dodging water rides, thunderstorms and heaps of unhealthy American food, George Carlin died. Maybe it was fitting that I spent 2 days in a place that he would have abhorred and loved at the same time. After all, he did narrate the Thomas The Tank Engine videos and was wildly considered a very gentle person.

It should come as no surprise that the Trackball regards the man who portrayed Cardinal Glick in Kevin Smith's Dogma (the character who replaced the crucifix with the thumbs-up Buddy Christ) as a demigod. George Carlin was the truth, wrapped in humor. As a teen in the late 1980s, Carlin was already a god to me when I was old enough to see his material. He was controversial and funny. But he also seemed like a cool guy who would be fun to hang with and watch humanity pass by, if only for the commentary. Yes, I did see his short-lived Fox sitcom and Jersey Girl.

His observational humor was eye-opening. He had a way of taking human reality and revealing its absurdities in ways that I had never thought of before. And he always stuck with the truth, the way he saw it, even if it offended, fell flat or was ignored. In a way, he made you face the truth, no matter how uncomfortable (like his characterizing of belief in a god as believing in having your own personal invisible avenger in the sky) and his gentleness and his humor helped you get comfy with it.

His naughty humor was liberating. They're just words, he pointed out, but it was clear he loved language and words in particular. He was as much a poet of the stand-up world and television world as he was a performer. He just snagged the Twain Prize for American Humor, and when I saw the bio pieces on him I thought it was because he was due to receive it, not because it was an obit. Shit.

Kevin Smith and Jerry Seinfeld, who could be considered the descendants of naughty Carlin and observational Carlin, have both written tributes to him which you should read. The best I can say is that the Twain of our time has passed and will be sorely missed by this fan.

The truth about neckties

2008-06-10T18:33:00.001-04:00

I just finished Scott Westerfeld's excellent YA novel "So Yesterday" which tackles who decides what is cool and fashionable in the teenage worlds of sneakers and clothing. Inside is a bit of a history of the necktie that posits that neckties came about because of the Little Ice Age. Everyone in Europe wore scarves all the time because it was freezing so bad the Vikings died out in Greenland. Neckties have been popular for centuries since then but they have no reason or purpose to exist. The bowtie and cravat have already fallen, but the necktie, with it's oversized shirt collar, continues to survive. You know I hate hollow traditions like that.

Combine this with a conversation I had with a geo-physicist on my bus one day about silly-easy things we could do to help the environment. She mentioned over-air conditioning DC to account for winter business wear that we insist on wearing in the summer. Like long-sleeved shirts, neckties and suit jackets.

Today was a triple digit day in DC, and schools and houses across the area had their AC conk out due to overwork. It may be time to rethink cinching our necks tight under a thick collar that likely has a t-shirt underneath. Even though the necktie culture is well entrenched. Even though the short-sleeve dress shirt is outdated. Even though the hip substitute for a tie is a sport jacket, which is decidedly less cool in the summer. Even though most office climate decisions are made by bosses, who are likely jacketed and tied and sweating men. Even though it makes younger workers look older, more serious and older workers look younger (imagine your boss in a t-shirt and shorts as opposed to a figure slimming navy blue suit and tie). Even though being formally dressed in DC is code for seriousness, as those in the most expensive ties and suits make the most unserious claims.

In one sense, wearing a necktie has desensitized people to seeing a sharp dressed man. What used to be reserved for super-formal occasions (Bond, James Bond) is now boring. And not wearing a necktie looks cool, hip, at least in DC. I'm impressed five times more often by the shirt and jacket hipster than the sharp, neato tie. Supposedly the ever encroaching biz-casual has threatened the neck tie, but that's a neckwear apocalypse that never quite seems to arrive.

Maybe I'm exposing some misplaced West Coast roots, but I think a t-shirt with a sport jacket and uncreased pants should be fine for anyone in a geek job. Yeah, the oversized collars, on shirts so transparent you have to wear an undershirt, probably have to go as well. Save the ties for the prom, the wedding, the funeral, the big presentation/occasion. We need a new idea of business wear that complements the changing environment. I don't know what that is.

As for me, I may try to limit the routine necktie wearing (does anyone care where I work if I wear a tie?) and keeping the AC off this summer in my office. The truth is that I can't escape the necktie entirely, and don't mind them that much, but it's time to usher those things into oblivion.

Balticon wrap-up and Indy review

2008-06-01T08:11:00.003-04:00

A good time was had by all the Trackballs at Balticon 42. The little trackballs bonded with friends of mine quite a bit and Dr. Trackball bought some jewelry and didn't seem horrified by the huge amounts of geekery. I got to do a lot of hanging out with cool people and hit and missed on good and bad panels.

The whole weekend was capped off by seeing Indiana Jones. My mini-review (with spoilers): good movie, the only wrong note in the whole thing was the space alien storyline. Readers of this blog know that I am not a fan of the alien crutch. I blame George Lucas, who insisted on mimicking 1950s alien films even though Spielberg and Ford objected for almost two decades, because they knew it wasn't appropriate for Indiana Jones. What do space aliens have to do with archeology? But to get a movie done, they had to cave. At the end there were two movies going on: Spielberg and Ford's story about Indy and his family, and Lucas' about aliens.

It would have been much better if it had been Indy versus the Soviets to find the Fountain of Youth (ironic, and have Indy refuse it's powers) or some other South American religious/mythical artifact. Tie it in with the Cold War fights in that part of the world (heck, set it in Cuba, two years before the revolution and have Indy run into Fidel). Ah, but they had to let George insist on his bad story idea. There's a whole odd dynamic between Lucas and Spielberg in which Steven bows to George, despite being the much better storyteller and possibly filmmaker.

Off to Balticon

2008-05-22T20:51:00.002-04:00

Geeks all across Maryland, DC, Virginia will pack their geeky bags for Balticon 42, including yours truly. I always get the feeling that I am not geeky enough to belong, despite my geek cred in the real world among the non-geeks. You could say I'm a geek and a geek fanboy, in that I think geeks are cool and don't feel worthy. No physical science degree, no comics pedigree, no l33t hacker skillz, no RPG XP, no publications. But somehow the tribe doesn't kick me out.

Every year, Balticon is like a checkpoint on the writing career such as it is. So here's a progress report:

Short fiction sold: 0.
Short stories drafted: 1.
Short stories reviewed by outside readers: 1.
Novels being drafted: 1.
Novel drafts completed: 1.
Novel drafts reviewed by outside readers: 1.
Novel drafts in rewrite: 1.
Query letters sent: 0.

Not very impressive, and a few years ago, I might have become mightily discouraged at the glacial pace of things. But some experience in crafting quality things suggests that time to get things right is time well spent, especially when building expertise and new skills. It's supposed to take ten years to become an expert in something. The Crashpoint Cascade has been in production seriously since about 2003, so I'm halfway there, right?

The Shiniest RPG in the 'Verse?

2008-05-17T19:09:00.003-04:00

Just stumbled across this in my travels around the Cortex. Looks shiny. But are there enough Browncoats out there to sustain it? Maybe there will be some at Balticon. I'm not sure I have time enough anymore for RPG play, what with keeping my own ship flying, writing, video games and all, but I hope somebody does.

The Truth about Video Games

2008-05-12T19:27:00.003-04:00

The release of the widely hailed Grand Theft Auto IV indicates what a sea change has happened in how society treats video games. GTA was ignored, GTA II (the first I ever played) got a smattering of negative press, and GTA III was treated as if it were a dire threat to national security. GTA IV is being treated as an entertainment and artistic masterpiece. Oh, how the times have changed.

Video games seem to be a major point of contention for this generation of adult males. Regarded as a childish pastime that every young woman instantly writes off as temporary but soon finds is not, video gaming has become a sore point and a cause for celebration at the same time. The truth is that video games are like any other entertainment: capable of greatness, culture-changing and yet prone to misuse by those who take everything too far, including those looking for easy scapegoats.

No longer is the video game the ridiculous boogeyman blamed for school shootings, carpal tunnel or empty bowling alleys (no, that would be guns, the mouse and the cell phone). But it is the culprit of the male college freshman who stays in his room for days, hiding from the unfamiliar campus, skipping class and ultimately dropping out. Being able to socialize with high school buds via email, texting and social networking also are crutches to make staying in his high school and parents' world so comfy.

Ah, but video games have risen in social status too, as us males of the first video gaming generation have ascended to positions of influence in industry, media and entertainment. And the games have gotten pretty good, in part because they don't take themselves too seriously. Why not celebrate them? They are the first and only completely interactive form of entertainment: mentally challenging and entertaining in ways completely unlike previous forms.

Cases in point would be games coming up in the near future:
Lego Batman: Play with a Lego Batman. If this is half as fun as Lego Star Wars, yum.
Lego Indiana Jones: See above
Spore: Be the (intelligent?) designer of an organism that evolves and eventually flies to other planets from Will Wright, the guy who created Sim City and the Sims.

And in a sign that games are supplanting movies, comics and books in some ways:
Ghostbusters: in lieu of another sequel
Star Wars: the Force Unleashed: Be Vader's apprentice in a brand new chapter that takes place between the trilogies, with a super realistic physics engine.

Tasty butterflies and other discoveries: BikeAbout 2008

2008-04-27T07:44:00.003-04:00

The 2008 Columbia BikeAbout happened on a gorgeous spring-summer day, sunny with the temperature somewhere in the 70s and a light breeze. I covered the thirteen miles of woodsy Columbia trails in two hours exactly, stopping on occasion to take in some exhibits on Columbia's history and suck down water.

Any time I am in the woods it is akin to a religious experience. Call it some Gaia religious belief riding alongside my (nonsecular) humanism: I worship nature and humanity. If that sounds flaky or contradictory, consider that I have no embarrassing clergy or bizarre rules to explain. And since humanity is part of nature, then the two actually go together like cereal and milk.

A rabbit raced me down one trail, scared witless, a squirrel did its best to run under my front tire, but missed, and a butterfly flew right at my mouth, which thankfully was closed. I could feel both its wings flatten against my lips like it was a feathery light bandage covering my lower face. Then it flew off. Since I was whipping along downhill at the moment and it was capable of flight, I didn't stop to see if it was okay. It didn't check on me either. Nature loving can be rough sometimes.

Maybe I'm drinking the Columbia Kool-Aid in saying this, but I think the Columbia street naming convention is neat. All Columbia street names are based on poetry, literature or in some cases the usual forgotten historical sources. Lots of people think these names are bizarre and that street names ought to be boring old and familiar (1st st, 2nd st, etc). Liquid Laughter Lane and Rippling Water Walk are unique and lyrical. In many cases, the original poetry has been expanded by the addition of the street type.

All in all, a very pleasant morning in suburban utopia.

Prediction markets and Innovation

2008-04-09T19:36:00.002-04:00

Check out this NYT article about using prediction markets to capture innovative ideas, foster communication and to give heads up to people in an organization about events or trends that are emerging below the radar. More companies are jumping into this because they hold some promise.

Google has experimented with this as well for improving idea generation and communication, and some folks have actually researched how well it works.

Prediction markets have many uses, one of which apparently is not political markets. Market response to elections seems to follow the latest polls exactly and is not often that accurate. These things have their limits when it comes to the general population. Within organizations, where knowledge is both common and not, they may be quite revealing.

As many of you know, I have been looking at prediction markets and other ways of predicting the future. Interestingly enough, prediction markets seem better at finding and aggregating existing information about the present (like 'we are behind opening a store in China' as the story points out).

If you want to know more about wisdom of the crowd-type techniques, read The Wisdom of Crowds. Who wrote it? Click the link, I'm too lazy to post all that info when you have your hand on the trackball.

The sweetless it is, the sweeter it gets

2008-04-02T18:52:00.005-04:00

I've written about fighting off the dreaded High Fructose Corn Syrup devil and in general becoming post-food. Here is an account from Slate of someone who went even further. Does sugar intake cause zits? Don't know. Does the taste of sugary things become unappetizing when you go off it even to some extent? Absolutely.

I haven't had the sugar cravings that this woman describes, nor the hangovers she had, but I have been not quite avoiding sugar as much. (Organic root beer and sarsaparilla rocks!) It could be your brain trying to go back to the 'good times' even though your body chemistry has moved on. Avoiding dairy and all fruit seems too extreme, and I can't eat nuts, which seems to be a major leg of her food consumption patterns. Some of the problem, as she points out, is that you really have to prepare all your own food to dodge sugar entirely. And that is just not possible at breakfast (organic cereal is the best I can do), lunch (at work: leftovers, frozen or buy it).

Still, I get the feeling that she and I and Dr. Trackball are much further ahead than most adults. Now if Pot Bellies would just stop making those chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and Trader Joes would stop selling cookies altogether...

Where you are is who you are

2008-03-23T08:29:00.002-04:00

How did it end up that I was geeking out around the LucasArts facility in the Presidio in San Francisco rather than working there? This occurred to me when I was taking a picture of the bronze Yoda statue by the front entrance, the only sign that a ton of really cool jobs working on the next Indiana Jones and Star Wars properties were on site. Only real geeks know that Lucas Arts moved whole hog from Skywalker Ranch and other locations to a nondescript but beautiful section of the Presidio.

People end up living where they are via three routes: accidentally, intentionally, and indirectly. Accidentally: most people in the US simply live where they grew up because it's familiar, family and friends are close by and it is so easy to piece together an existence from all that familiarity. Intentionally: at some point early in their lives, some people say, look, I want to live/work/go to school there and then they make it so. Indirectly: some people follow a job, a spouse or a passion that limits where they can live, and the choice is just fallout from that initial decision. There are few nomads, other than those required to be so due to their job (military, sales, corporate execs, etc.).

As I travel around the U.S. to places I've always wanted to see, I play this game in my head of trying to figure out how people who live there came to live there. I'm in San Francisco now and my feeling is that there is a greater proportion of intentionals here than in other places. It's the same vibe I get from immigrant and transient-heavy DC. Maybe it's because both are creative class meccas, granted of different flavors. Richard Florida, who studies these issues, has a new book out called "Who's Your City?" I haven't read it yet, but it deals with this kind of thing.

Given my job, DC is the obvious choice for me and I realize now that I figured out where I wanted to live and what I wanted to do at about the same time. I wanted to go to college in DC but was stuck in NY for financial reasons. But I made sure to go to grad school inside the Beltway. Thinking these things through paid off very nicely for me. I would recommend to any high school student that he/she factor location into the college decision. College location feeds into social and business networking quite heavily. Yes, you can get a job in Miami after colleging in Seattle, but it's swimming upstream. And above all, don't let your location just happen, because these things tend to get locked in after a while. Someday, you might look at that Yoda statue, or the dairy farm in Vermont, or a restaurant in New York, and get pissed that you're just a visitor.

If I had made a different career choice and was successful, maybe I would have ended up at a West Coast entertainment or tech company. Growing up in the Shire made this difficult (especially for laying the ground work for comp sci or anything artistic) but not impossible. I could see an alternate timeline where that did happen: I would be slaving away on animation shots for the upcoming Star Wars movie, halfway through my 30s, unmarried, wondering if what I was doing was truly meaningful and if life had more to offer. All geek and no life makes the Trackball a dull boy.

So how did I react when I saw Yoda and realized that I was on the outside looking in? I took his picture, with my kids in it, felt a little sorry for the people inside (I'm not kidding it was a beautiful day and I was on vacation) and moved on with a big grin on my face. I mean, I was standing right outside a geek mecca! Awesome! I score major geek points.

James Bond + Dilbert in the Dunwich Humor

2008-03-06T18:37:00.002-05:00

I've been reading Charles Stross novels at a feverish pace lately. Like Neal Stephenson and Richard K. Morgan, I'll read anything he writes.

Even still, I was more than a little surprised at how much I like his Bob Howard novels. The main character is a sarcastic IT support geek who works for a secret British MI6-type place that combats the supernatural world. Yes, he is in expert in computational demonology and is regularly threatened with Powerpoint, government bureaucracy and clueless computer users as well as zombies and demons straight out of H.P. Lovecraft. And I mean straight. out. of. Lovecraft. These are Lovecraftian sequels, really, but with humor instead of horror and the world of Dilbert instead of a creepy gothic Halloween vibe.

Brilliant.

The first novel was The Atrocity Archives.

The second is The Jennifer Morgue.

Entangle your destiny with them and thank me later.

Hey Air Force: above all, stop the web blackouts

2008-02-26T21:44:00.002-05:00

Has anyone else begun to grow tired of Air Force 'Above All' ads blacking out an entire website? The military essentially running pop-up ads that 'block' or 'black-out' a website won't win them much love.

The Air Force 'Above All' campaign though, especially the cyberspace defense ads with that cool 'Minority Report' command center, is pretty darn neat. The issues it raises lie near and dear to my novel's heart. So I'll throw a link in to their site in hopes that they stop the blackout ads.

2008-02-25T17:34:00.003-05:00

Pew has released a major survey on religion in America. Big result: people are moving fluidly between religions. And the second biggest religion behind Christian is 'unaffiliated' which translates to 'none'. Not that the unaffiliated don't have religious beliefs, but that they don't belong to an organized religion. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Check out the results, including state breakdowns for the lower 48, here.

As a humanist and free thinker, I find this encouraging. More people are exercising their free will and are breaking out of whatever mold their families may or may not have tried to stuff them into. It makes society less tribal, more thoughtful and more heterogeneous. Maybe Sam Harris was on to something in The End of Faith.

Since atheism is the new gay, maybe the pockets of high 'unaffiliated' will correspond to creative class meccas in the US, a la Richard Florida's hypothesis that the presence of gays in a city is a sign of tolerance, a key ingredient for municipal success. (See 'Creative Class: how cities succeed' link on the right).

Rewrite Hell

2008-02-14T20:25:00.002-05:00

I have been rewriting the novel The Crashpoint Cascade for years (very part time though, because of family and work obligations). It has gone through about four major drafts and is now into its fifth. Some of that has been due to me learning how to write a novel. But a lot of it is just the requisite work needed. With two readers having poured through an entire draft, I have a pile of edits to put in. This is a real rewrite, more so than the others, because it is based on input from two other human brains that are not mine.

Rewriting is creative destruction in its purest essence. Favorite chunks of prose are slaughtered, ideas are belittled, put on the stand, and often executed. Characters become collateral damage. The process can seem endless, pointless, and will make you question why you ever bothered to show the world how you are a no-talent idiot that doesn't have the sense to recognize the foolishness of trying something so far beyond your abilities. Sometimes you have to write some new stuff that you know will be trashed just to get you a couple more steps on the journey to better understanding the story or a character. And sometimes you don't realize that it will be trashed until later on during a quietly sober moment of despair.

And then, while rewriting, you'll see a story point snap into place. A character steps into some contrived dead end you are sweating and takes the story in a better direction. You find some really cool chunks and they point you to new changes. Edits that you or the readers suggest spawn a whole series of new ideas and you are off and running again. Crest and trough, crest and trough.

Other writers have talked more eloquently about rewriting hell than I have, (Elizabeth Bear has this excellent post about rewrite hell here and and elsewhere she recommends this post by Justine Larbalestier) but experiencing this first hand is worth sharing.

One of the key things they and others mention is that you have to persevere. There won't be a light at the end of the tunnel for a long while, if ever, and if you stop, all is lost. If you don't go far enough, the finished product won't be good enough. Rewriting makes everyone feel like an abject failure and question their use of talent and time on writing. It never goes away, apparently. Or, as Woody Allen put it, 90% of success is showing up and by definition, not giving up.

There's a reason why many published writers' first complete novels sit in drawers, unpublished but not unloved, but never to be returned to. It could be that these novels are the necessary learning failures, never ready for primetime. And maybe each is the scar that reminds the writer about hard won lessons driven home about slogging through the rewrite stage, the bionic right hand that constantly reminds what impatience, inexperience and lack of commitment can result in.

Boycott MySpace

2008-02-10T15:04:00.000-05:00

Because they discriminate on the basis of religion by deleting groups for atheists and agnostics after they were hacked by Christians. That it is owned by Rupert Murdoch should come as no surprise. Fox Noise regularly refuses commercials that it doesn't agree with too.

Thanks to Charlie Stross' blog where I first heard this, and see the Cleveland Plain Dealer here with the full story.

Of course, I'm already on Facebook and have little use for MySpace. I wonder what other groups MySpace will persecute next.

Trackballs set for Balticon 42

2008-02-05T18:12:00.001-05:00

The whole Trackball clan will peek in on Balticon 42 on Memorial Day weekend. Dr. Trackball surprised me with a hotel reservation where the con takes place.

Their only con experience has been an exhausted romp through ComiCon last year in San Diego. Balticon is much different, much lower key. This should be interesting.

Lair Deadline is set

2008-01-21T21:41:00.000-05:00

As a pal mentioned here in the comments, I should have the Lair ready by the premiere of the next Batman movie, The Dark Knight. The movie will feature a new Batcave, which you shouldn't underestimate as an influence on Lair design.

So, this year, by July 18th, when the movie premieres, the Lair will be finished. Of course I have no idea what it being finished means, but I will figure it out.

I must catch this when it comes to town

2008-01-14T19:09:00.000-05:00

I know, I should be beyond the Star Trek thing by now. The only Vegasy thing I did in Vegas in 98 was catch Star Trek: The Experience at the Vegas Hilton. Loved it.

But Star Trek: The Tour is coming to DC. No way I miss that. Thanks to Wil Wheaton for pimping it on his blog. The more of his stuff I read, the more I like him.

Oh, and on a related note, the Lair is coming along. Still looks like a basement corner, but it's taking shape. When it's done, it will be Lair 1.0 still, but 1.0 is better than 0.0.

The Truth about High Def DVDs

2008-01-08T19:25:00.000-05:00

A couple months back, I bought a Playstation 3 in part to upscale DVDs to near high def and to play high definition DVDs. At that point, and even now, there has been a format war between HD DVD (Toshiba) and Blu-ray (Sony). Blu-ray has sold more discs but Toshiba has sold more single-purpose players (not counting the PS3, which if counted, hands the player race to Sony). They also had pulled in most of the studios to their side. So I bet on Blu-ray.

Looks like I was right. Sony just scooped Toshiba to sign Warner Bros., the biggest DVD content studio, to an exclusive Blu-ray only deal. It's over.

Some say that this is all moot because we'll all be downloading movies to our TVs and DVDs will go the way of vinyl LPs. Not so fast. The American internet is too slow to handle standard definition TV, much less high def. Video on demand has not taken off for standard def and that is the closest analog to downloadable movies. No one wants to be in the middle of a thriller and then hit internet lag, or worse yet, wait three hours to download a two hour movie.

The cosmic reward for excellence

2008-01-01T18:42:00.000-05:00

One of the truths about life seems to be that the world takes notice when someone does something difficult, and does it well. Everyday acts of excellence, like landing a plane safely, or keeping the internet infrastructure operating, are well compensated. Apple and Google have done really well, and it's not an accident. Pro sports performers and entertainers rake it in because they are that good, people recognize it and money and acclaim just flow.

Maybe this is an intentionally constructed feedback loop by human society or maybe it's unintentional. Since it's not always noticeable via financial compensation, the feedback mechanism can be hard to spot ('she's, like, the best cupcake maker ever'). It's still pretty neat to see nonetheless. Whenever you come across one of those really well done things, it's a 'wow' moment.

Reading Charles Stross' science fiction is becoming a consistent 'wow' experience. Like Neal Stephenson and Richard K. Morgan, reading him prompts feelings of both 'wow, this is good' and 'I can only wish to tell stories like this.' He is the cutting edge of sci-fi. Chris Nolan is one of the cutting edge filmmakers and most of his movies are so good that I could easily start from the beginning after each ends (he made Memento, Batman Begins and The Prestige).

In general it takes about 10 years for someone to become an expert at something. They may be unrecognized, even by themself, as being just barely proficient until they make it all the way to expert level, but that doesn't mean that their mastery isn't advancing the whole time. I have seen this happen in my own line of work. Also, I have stared at my own lack of expertise in writing a novel for years and slowly watched myself chip away at it. I can see it happening with Guitar Hero III, which I got for Christmas, and have gained a whole new appreciation for real guitar players.

While it's fun to be at the crest of the learning curve, starting at zero can be very tough. There may be a learning curve restart at work on a project that is daunting considering the 10 year rule. It can be downright terrifying for the early retired or laid off who have to find a new field just to bring home a paycheck.

As a shout out to those who I think are experts in what they do, and who I aspire to follow gamely, this site will now add 'The Pros' links to the people who are recognized as having their expert shit together. Since I use the ToT site myself for interweb-wanderings, it's also a reference section for me, but please abuse it for your own pleasure.

So Happy New Year, and good luck to all who are just starting a new expertise learning curve or are already on their way. Remember, by 2018 latest, people will bow in your general direction.
For those who are procrastinating a needed start at the bottom of a learning curve, remember, the universe loves excellence. And you don't want to wait till 2019 to be an expert, do you?

My short EVE Online experiment

2007-12-22T08:03:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I tried another MMORPG, EVE Online. Fell for the claims that it was different, that it was good, has wonderful graphics. It offers a total sandbox approach where everything is pretty much player created, even bounty-hunter mission assignments, corporate powers and the economy. They offered a 14 day free trial and I, being a total sucker, gave it a shot.

I was done with it in one afternoon.

Okay, it was different. No first person shooter, just you piloting a space ship. Graphics are gorgeous. My big problems with it are: the camera, the interface, the learning curve, the general feel.

The camera: staring at my own ship during combat is annoying. Controlling the camera in space, when in galactic map mode, etc. was difficult and annoying. This is why I gave up on Homeworld: camera issues made combat almost impossible. In the future, there will be some kind of combat schematic optimized to filter the necessary info out of lots of useless data. In Homeworld and EVE, well, can't let info management get in the way of showing off cool nebulas.

The interface is just overloaded with information and trying to figure out which system you're in is a chore. I lost the intro tutorial when I entered a space station, only to realize it was waiting for me to do something before it continued. The learning curve is tremendous: you essentially have to memorize a skill and spaceship parts catalog where every item sounds/looks just like the last one. You have to learn how to navigate through space with warp and jumpgates and nearly impossible to read maps of routes between planetary systems. Plus, you spend most of your time watching your ship fly through space with nothing to do.

It all adds up to not being fun, which is the point. Why would a casual gamer bother? Why would a hardcore gamer make the time investment to figure it out?

In contrast, recently I downloaded MS Visual C# and Sql Server Express Editions to toy with related to an experiment at work. I was up and running, and knowing what I was doing, within minutes of starting each program. My actions produced understandable results and I could see myself improving instantly. Why can't video game designers shoot for the same result?

Trackball math class tracking update: another loss

2007-12-14T18:23:00.001-05:00

An update on the continuing saga of Minnie Trackball's math class tracking. If you remember, we were concerned about the frequent cancellations of math class in 2nd grade and resolved to keep a count of how many school days included a math class casualty.

The first two weeks of school, there was no math. They were both four day weeks though. Every day since then, there has been math. And it's been good stuff.

Until today. Math was cancelled for disability awareness day. Wheelchair races, awareness raising, etc. I have no problem with that. But cancel something else. Even reading or language arts. Illiteracy is not the problem in a high-performing school, but there is a chronic math and science lag all across the US, in even the best schools.

So far, there have been 9 days of no math class, a lot less than we feared by this point.

Post-food, but not dead

2007-12-10T20:27:00.001-05:00

In the past, I've mentioned that I am evolving to a post-food position. Post-food, like post-materialist, means that one is no longer obsessed or possessed by food. It doesn't command a huge amount of attention, or produce a large amount of excitement or interest.

Having said that, I should point out that this doesn't mean that I don't like food or ignore it. Being post-food means that quality is more important than quantity. Which leads me to the three objects of praise in this post: Trader Joe's, Let's Dish, and Wegmans.

Trader Joe's is the much heralded low cost, mostly healthy grocery chain that sells a lot of its own brand food. Everyone who has access to one raves about it and for years I wondered if the hype was for real. We finally got one in Columbia, and it has lived up to everything everyone has said. The food is great, unique and cheap. Plus shopping there is a different experience.

As people who lunch with me know, the Trackballs have been using Let's Dish a lot. Dr. Trackball spends 2 hours a month preparing about 8 meals at their place, which she takes home and chucks in the freezer. The food is very good: usually a meat entree (we favor the poultry and seafood) that is tasty and just needs to be cooked.

Finally, Wegmans. Wegmans is a super grocery store from back in My Shire that has everything. Growing up in the Shire, I disliked the store for reasons having more to do with the upbringing that didn't fit me than anything else. In the land of crappy Giant and Safeway stores, Wegmans is a huge step forward. Still waiting for it to settle in Columbia.

Bon appetit.

Read The Nerd Handbook

2007-11-26T20:49:00.000-05:00

Thanks to Ron at Pint'N'Tome for this link to the Nerd Handbook written by Rands In Repose. A must read if you have a nerd in your life. (hey, I wrote a 2 line post!)

Two years later, Trackball still on track

2007-11-23T11:38:00.000-05:00

For those who have read this blog for some or all of it's 2 year existence, you know that it started with a bit of a bang by bashing Thanksgiving and by laying down a sort of guiding philosophy for life - be true to oneself and it's how you live, not how long you have lived.

Put this all together, and I thought it would be a good exercise to reread that Thanksgiving basher from 2005 and see if it still held true. Had a good Thanksgiving this year, which was more of a dinner party at some friends' house, so I want to stick the hypocrisy meter in the wind and see what happens.

Result: I haven't deviated at all from my earlier take on the holiday. In fact, I've found that as I reread it that I am quite taken the post. I've found this when rereading other posts: I enjoy reading some of them and if it's been long enough, can surprise myself with an idea or a turn of phrase I forgot about.

Some people who review their own creations, whether they be cooking, writing, children, painting or woodwork, always turn away in disgust. Sometimes that happens for me, but I think it's because usually I can tell what of mine sucks or doesn't suck.

So I'm feeling some pride in my ability to self-critique, stay true, and of course, not have a bloat-out on the pigout holiday.

Playstation 3

2007-11-18T21:22:00.000-05:00

Went and got a PS3 to upconvert DVDs and play Blu-Ray DVDs this weekend. I got the 40 GB with Spiderman 3 Blu-Ray disc for $400. This includes another 5 Blu-Ray DVDs for free as a rebate.

I had been contemplating upgrading the DVD viewing experience on my 1080p Sony TV and this was the right fit. I do a fair bit of DVD watching due to Netflix and it makes no sense to do that in standard def. Tested out the Cars standard def DVD and it looked phenomenal on the PS3. Now I just need to get my surround sound back online.

I don't plan on playing many (for now, any) games on the PS3. The Wii has it beat in the fun factors for a gamer like me. The PS3 games are also a lot more expensive. Supposedly it will take developers years how to figure out how to make games for the PS3, if at all. Currently, the PS3 is a bust as a console, trailing the other next gen models, but it is the best Blu-Ray player on the market. Sony is betting that once the game companies come around that they will have a system that will beat the other two for the next ten years. We'll see. The developers may just slink away and get caught kissing Nintendo and Microsoft's butts.

The PS3 is also a supercomputer, with a chip a dozen times faster than the highest PC processor. You can allow your unused PS3 to help do medical research or if you are an astronomer, use a series of PS3s to do your supercomputing.

A Kiss for HoCo Public Libraries

2007-11-08T19:54:00.000-05:00

ToT has always been a big fan of public libraries. Until I moved from My Shire to Prince George's County, MD, I had no idea what a good public library was. In the Shire, I ended up checking out the same book on the War of 1812 for about eight years in a row because there wasn't much better to be had.

Now that I live in Howard County, MD, I have inadvertently treated myself to one of the best public libraries in the country. It was #1 in 2005 and is #2 in 2006 for areas with between 250,000 and 500,000 people. The parking lots and the shelves are always full and I can't walk out of there with less than three doorstoppers.

Tonight, we hit the central library branch with the little Trackballs in downtown Columbia and I cleaned a whole bunch of books off my reading list. The kids loaded up the canvas bag we use to carry them and Micro got himself into the pajama time story hour. Here's what ToT will be reading:

Thirteen - Richard K. Morgan
Innovation and Entrepreneurship - Peter Drucker
The Watchmen - Alan Moore
Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki

When you come home from the library with an armful of must reads, it's like your birthday - but for free (or, for very well spent tax money).

Facebooking

2007-10-27T10:54:00.001-04:00

For the less socially extroverted and networking averse, who shun happy hours, don't carry business cards with them to the grocery store and just don't have time, connecting and reconnecting with people can be difficult. For someone with writerly ambitions, it's even worse. Read, write or gab: guess which one loses out?

And then came the online social networking sites. While some might use them to socialize, for the rest of us, it's a great way of finding people who you have lost touch with. I have joined Facebook and found a lot of people that I know. There's some fun stuff on there and like-minded groups to join.

Yes, it was originally for the college (Harvard) set, but aren't most techy things? It's now expanded to more people (and so has Myspace and others). Even people older than Trackball are signing on in droves. The best part is you can stay within your circle or expand out. No awkward hems and haws or anything.

Who knows what the long term effect of this will be? Equality in networking? Face2face connections resulting from, say a common affinity for Firefly? Maybe an even playing field for this networking-fueled world we live in.

So come one, come all, and join the Trackball's circle of friends.

Another human has read the novel

2007-10-13T19:36:00.000-04:00

Thought I ought to report that a volunteer reader of my novel The Crashpoint Cascade has finished it and has started feedbacking. And he is the reader that I knew would be the most detailed and picky and critical, which means I'm happy he finished first.

To all you others out there with a copy, you will no longer be first, but I eagerly await giving you second place. I need contrasting comments - that's always fun! What if First Reader leads me astray? Scifi can be a hard genre because it is a ton of subgenres with very loyal and picky fans. One genre failing is another's shining point (like long breathless dissertations on astrophysics - retch). Let's mix those comments up.

As usual, the comments coming in highlight many things that were nagging me in very quiet voices but I wasn't sure were legitimate. Now I know. So some fixing is underway.

In the meanwhile, there has been one short story and part of another novel (not a sequel) drafted. That may make the ToT sound like a writing machine, but keep in mind that 0 items have been submitted to anyone for publication, 0 things have been sold, and 0 have been published. And so it goes.

Math, for real

2007-10-04T21:41:00.001-04:00

Minnie Trackball is now deep into the math groove. So far the number of days of math this school year stands at n-8, that is, every day of school except the first 8.

And it's real math, they're grading it, and progress is underway. Same is true for reading, spelling and a handful of other subjects. Won't be long now until report cards and teacher confabs come up.

Norv Turner's Ego, dammit

2007-09-30T18:59:00.001-04:00

As the 49ers go down in defeat in another game where they have no offense, and the Chargers continue to self-destruct, one can only point the blame finger at Norv Turner and his ego.

He's a great offensive coordinator and was making some good progress in SF. He has two bad and badder head coaching gigs and of course, the huge offensive coordinator run in Dallas in the 1990s. During the head coaching moves offseason, he really wanted to stay in SF for a number of reasons.

So yeah, he takes the head job with the Chargers, who were as primed for the Super Bowl as any other team that didn't make it last year. And they're stinking up the place this year, even though they are virtually unchanged from last year, except for him.

Norv Turner's ego has managed to damage or destroy two teams that he works for. Beware the traps of letting one's ego dictate major decisions in life. It's not only embarrassing but it is dangerous to those around you. Please forward this to Fred Thompson, John Edwards, Paris Hilton, and George Lucas.

Time to start new coach talk in SF

2007-09-23T15:48:00.000-04:00

All suffering 49ers have to wonder how the defense has massively improved but the O is still a zero. Much of the blame lays at the feet of Coach Mike Nolan, who likes conservative, non-existent offenses. Now that the 49ers have laid another egg, this time against Pittsburgh, where only one late game touchdown was scored and Gore ran for less than 50 (50?!?!) yards

The Niners loaded up at receiver last offseason and upgraded probably more at that position than any other team (N.E. did have decent receivers in 2006, mind you, the Niners had squat.)

The conservative, no-show offense was a joke when the team was 2-0 somehow. Nolan didn't give any indication of opening things up. Now, as the losses begin to stack up and the offense continues to sputter, people hopefully will start asking tough questions about the franchise that brought the Walsh Offense to the NFL and used to be considered an offensive powerhouse. Either the coach has to change, or it's time to consider changing who is coach.

Fantasy Football Fantasy

2007-09-10T20:55:00.000-04:00

ToT is happy football season is back, but as usual, the experience is somewhat soured by two factors:
1. My 49ers are on the other side of the continent, and according to NFL rules must receive only 20% of the coverage that the Jets may get, regardless of how much the Jets have sucked since Nixon was Prez.
2. Fantasy football is back.

Before fantasy football, people rooted for teams in what still is a team sport. But now, the teams have been derivatized so that, as the Couch Slouch has pointed out, people now follow every tackle, sack, run, TD and towel wipe of individual players. This is the equivalent of going from investing in the S&P 500 to investing in just the interest payments from mortgages on houses on Richmond Street in San Diego.

This perversion cannot stand, man.

So let's make it worse. Let's have every fantasy footballer post their standings in a national database. Then fans of fantasy football could create their own fantasy team of fantasy football participants. After enough years of FF, these stat freaks should have reputation, winnings, etc. to keep score with. The FF fans could build portfolios by being able to pick between Chip, the unemployed fantasy seer who always finishes in the top three of the Beerswillers League, or MonkeyAss14, who has a proprietary formula for choosing the most underrated rookie to get the highest fantasy football score.

Why not have fantasy football leagues that aren't player focused, but offense and defense oriented? You could start the Colts offense and the Seattle defense one week, the Ravens offense and the Colts defense. How about an injury league, where you choose the team that will rack up the most injuries in a week? How about a fantasy football league that doesn't follow raw productivity, but productivity per dollar in the contract? You can derivatize everything if there's stats for it, right? You see, we need to have a large amount of investments, so you can diversify your fantasy football investment dollar.

That way, some moron will be rooting for Chad Johnson, Rex Grossman, Manny Lawson, Joe Nedney, the Packers D, the Arizona O, the Ravens offense to score low, the Raiders defense to get blown wide open and have no idea what he's doing. Then he'll have to hire a fantasy football broker to manage it all.

And actually watch the game for once.

Math: Day 1

2007-09-10T18:03:00.000-04:00

After two abbreviated 4 day weeks of school, Minnie Trackball has finally had a math class - and math homework! That's 1/9 for those keeping score.

And unlike last year, it sounds like there are boys in this math class, about half.

We'll see if we actually find out about test scores, get forewarning on upcoming tests and other communications one might expect. We have our fingers crossed.

High expectations

2007-08-27T18:47:00.000-04:00

So starts another year in the public school system for one of the younger Trackballs and the last year of private preschool for the other.

Athena help us.

The problem Dr. Trackball and I have is that we expect too much. Like quality, world class math instruction in grade school. Like some measure of efficiency in public schools. Like hanging on to a dynamite teacher who exceeds our high expectations in preschool. Like not having girls under 10 have to be blatantly discriminated against.

Well, the last one has already failed. And today we are 0/1 for school days of math instruction. That's right, this year, we're keeping count. In a school system that meets the 180 day minimum by stacking half days throughout the year and in a bunch at the end, every day counts, even the first. Not to mention that there are big time standardized tests in Minnie's grade.

What Renee Zellweger's character in Jerry McGuire said, "It used to be a better meal, and now it's a better life," now applies to education. So expecting a lot kind of comes with the territory and we don't see any reason to be reluctant in having high expectations.

Yes, this is a high scoring, well to do school system that is better than a lot others in the country and probably better than most of the rest of the world. We don't care. There are better ones out there, and those kids will have algebra in 9th grade, and plenty of AP and IB courses in high school. In the global market pool for talent, being a step ahead of Kansas creationistic science curriculum is not good enough.

Those who expect less get less, and those who are expected to provide less sense this and underperform a little more each year. That's fine at Giant supermarket (hellooooo Wegmans and Trader Joes!) but not fine with the Trackballs' education.

So, half-assed public school system, (motto: 'We coast on rich kids') you're on notice. Don't make us get involved with the math curriculum. Don't get us started on the lack of science and social studies curriculum. Don't enrage us with a communications blackout because teachers just don't want to communicate about upcoming tests, test grades, or anything at all. Don't make us start getting noisy about how in the early grades, nearly all the girls in a grade are stuck in the slowest math class. This has gone beyond the ability of trying to squeeze some special compensation for just our child when it's more than a teacher, it's the curriculum, the administration, the school board, etc.

Why don't you try to wow us? Just this once? Or as the op-ed in the Washington Post noted today, we might have to consider other options. And then only the lower expectation parents will be left, at least in this particular public school system. That pisses us off too.

It's those high expectations again.

Trackballs roll through San Diego

2007-08-19T10:31:00.001-04:00

The Trackball family recently went on vacation to San Diego, where we caught the last day of Comic Con, geeked out at Legoland, saw tons of animals at the Zoo and Sea World, and generally enjoyed the super comfortable climate.

This was the first place I had visited in the real world after exploring it virtually in a video game. That was a bit surreal. Poring over paper maps, guide books and even Google Maps is not quite the same thing as racing around a city on the Xbox before seeing it for real. The sum total effect is for one to feel much more comfortable in spaces that are much less new and strange. I imagine this will become more and more common between Second Life type virtual manifestations and Google Maps becoming more and more sophisticated. And having seen several cities visualized in Lego means that those cities will feel much the same when I first set foot in them.

Representative wow points that speak to what excites the Trackballs:

Batmobile at Comic-Con

Lego San Francisco at Legoland.

Coronado Beach (little Trackballs loved it especially)

Balboa Park (this peaceful room in the Japanese Garden is a stylistic suggestion for the Lair)

The Truth about Harry Potter

2007-08-07T20:52:00.000-04:00

The truth about Harry Potter is that it ended like it began, a fantastical tale with (mostly) lifelike characters with real issues, a story so fun that people took it too seriously. In the final analysis, all the analysis will lead the killjoys to scoff at the final book, and eventually, the entire series. Because the books are all of a set. The killjoys though, are usually too scared and insecure to rise above being overly critical. A good story is a good story if it's enjoyable to experience and one shouldn't be afraid of that happening.

Having said that, here are my thoughts about the final book and the whole series.

I didn't understand all the rules and bylaws that allowed the final confrontation to come out as it did. As someone who knows their way around a D20, if I couldn't follow the magic rules explained there, then it wasn't clear enough. It reeked of writing oneself into and out of a corner. The 7th horcrux bit was genius, but to use it and have an escape clause requires something clear and understandable.

Dumbledore was Gandalfian cool until he was turned into Tony Soprano in the final book; flawed, doubting, compromised and manipulative. Did anyone else notice the odd adult-like digression into giving good old Albus a needless complex? It was way out of character. This backstory never explained how an earlier trauma made him the wise mentor he was and it ran totally counter to the idea that runs underneath the wise mentor archetype: they have always been wise and good, it's not a cover or overreaction for old sins. General rule for the final book of a series is to not unload an entire backstory in the final reel. Everything should be set up, with only plot-advancing secrets revealed. Dumbledore got kind of mangled in the last book, and I think it undermined the greater conflict between him and Harry: which is why he kept Harry in the dark and how the heck could he know the future so definitively? Me thinks J.K. got a bit too tangled in all the narrative threads she was weaving, and that's something because she's a master weaver.

Snape, on the other hand, has been a brilliantly portrayed character from start to finish. In terms of most heroic and selfless, I think I might hand him the prize. He's the true long suffering hero and knowing his story, you begin to see Harry as a whiny Wesley Crusher who swoops into save the day without ever even losing his glasses. Severus is friggin' hurting for decades and unlike Harry, he does good things even though he hates it. However, as others pointed out, his finale and subsequent Pensieve episode happened too late in the book. It should have happened in the middle, and Harry should have been carrying around Snape's secrets the whole time, unable to tell anyone. Snape seems to be let off the hook too much by the good wizards for killing Dumbledore, and there's no emotional payoff when one finds out the real story.

Finally, the one character that I think has been way too underdeveloped, too shallow, too lacking in personality in every book is Harry Potter. All the other characters leap off the page but him. Yes, he's the audience's representative to a large extent, but after seven books, he's a blank. There's nothing there. His dead dad has more of a presence. His smarts only exist to expose plot points, his bravery is necessary to keep the action going, his angry outbursts keep the drama churning. This would be fine in a Dan Brown thriller where all the characters are kind of flat, but nearly every other character in the series is beautifully crafted. In the end, I didn't care if he lived or died: there was no emotional tugs to pull. The death of Anakin Solo was absolutely heart-wrenching because the author made it so damn tragic and noble.

Consider this: If Harry, Hermione, Ron and Hagrid all got on board a crowded Metro train, and Hagrid accidentally knocked over some frazzled commuter, what would each character say? I can instantly picture the general body language, tone and actions of each, except for one.

Applesauce Meter hits 50%

2007-07-13T16:59:00.000-04:00

Yes, I'm raising the Applesauce Meter to a full 50%. Why? Not because of the iPhone, which I have no experience and very little interest in.

Nope, it's because of iTunes. I always thought it was inaccessible to those of us who don't go the iPod route, and it is. But if you burn the AAC-encoded songs to a disc and then rip them back to your computer as mp3s, you can put them anywhere. A pain in the butt workaround, but worth it. I tested it out by buying one song and it worked beautifully. iTunes even recognizes the mp3 version of the song alongside it's AAC formatted twin. Great.

And the iTunes store has a ton of music, more than I've seen elsewhere. (But where's the Led Zeppelin?) The software is simple to use, the music easy to search and try out. Apple can make very good software programs.

This is another case of Apple doing a terrific job, but at least half of what they're claiming. So, accordingly, with a Macbook and iTunes account, the meter has been adjusted to half water, half actual Applesauce.

Applesauce Meter Rises; will iPhone boost it more?

2007-06-28T19:25:00.000-04:00

After some discussion with a friend of mine about Apple's pricing structure, I concede that it isn't completely overpriced. In fact, the higher end MacBook Pros are underpriced relative to something similar in the PC notebook universe. But the low end MacBooks still carry a price premium of a couple of hundred dollars.

So the Applesauce Meter moves from 5% applesauce to 20%. Still at 80% water, meaning 80% hype.

Now, many of you know that tomorrow is the 1st day of the Apple iPhone. Much hype has been thrown at it, a phenomenon well documented by my favorite journalism critic, editor Jack Shafer at Slate. It got a pretty upbeat but balanced review in the NYT from David Pogue and the WSJ's Walter Mossberg liked it too with some reservations.

You know that I am no iPod fan, and the iPhone looks like an iPod killer. That stupid scroll wheel concept is gone and the thing seems to look and act like the PADDs from Star Trek. So Apple is making some imperfect strides again. At least they are trying. But given the dearth of common cell phone features like txt msging and not being able to replace the battery without killing the device, Apple is still up to its old tricks: they wow you on the GUI and the body, but drive you nuts with odd limitations (only AT&T?) and lack of features (putting iTunes music on a non-iPod?).

It's becoming common knowledge that you don't buy 1.0 or even 2.0 of any Apple product. Only fanboys who will buy all the models need bother. This is unfortunate because Apple could expand its market share and polish its reputation even more if they didn't roll stuff out of their skunkworks prematurely to take another bite at your wallet.

The original iPhone, circa 2151?

Can't stop the signal

2007-06-20T20:02:00.000-04:00

I can't attend, but there's a charity screening of Joss Whedon's movie Serenity, sequel to the beloved TV show Firefly, all around the world this weekend, Whedon's birthday. Money is being raised for Equality Now, his favorite charity.

Details are here.

Previous gushing by ToT about Firefly is here.

Be a big damn hero and participate at the Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse this weekend.

No chocolate cake for breakfast

2007-06-10T12:31:00.000-04:00

Dr. Trackball is away on a business trip, rolling all over the country and leaving ToT with Minnie and Micro in his charge. I've been a single parent.

It's not easy, but not impossible. My biggest challenge, other than maintaining 1) my sanity, 2) a semblance of responsible parenting and 3) the house, has been to live up to the dad-is-in-charge stories of yore.

But I haven't let the kids have chocolate cake for breakfast.

I'm such a guy failure. The best I can muster is letting certain housework slide. There are no pizza boxes littered around the house, no massively fun outings that Mom would never attempt, no horrible dad slipups, like sending children to school with no lunch. There has been a Chuck E. Cheese run and a Three Stooges DVD Netflixed just to show that things are different without Mom around. I even cut the kids a break on a mental health day off that I took, the end result of which was driving myself crazy and cutting hours of me-time out of the day for no discernible benefit to the kids.

Parental martyrs, whom I already hold in low opinion, are even lower in my estimation given my brief brush with their kind of living. It can't be all about the kids because it's bad for everyone. The next day off the kids will be going to school on time.

So today, we're off to see Shrek 3, even though I'd rather see Pirates or follow my usual Sunday routine and bury my face in some video games or writing. Micro may ruin the whole thing, but Minnie hasn't been able to do much that she wanted given the depleted parental ability to take the kids to separate activities.

The obligatory Star Wars 30th Anniversary post

2007-05-25T19:05:00.000-04:00

It's been 30 years since Star Wars came out. Rather than talk about what it all means to me and going on some nostalgic trip through Hollywood history from the 1970s, or recounting the history of the franchise, I want to do something different. Lets talk about the little hidden truths about Star Wars that have been drowned out by the cacophony of Lucas haters, fanboys and the press.

1. That the first movie was a blockbuster is not the point - it's that 30 years later people all over the world are still addicted to it, ToT included. Blockbusters come and go (how many Titanic expansion universe novels are there? none) but Star Wars has continued. Why? Because it's that damn good. How many of us have felt like they spent serious time in the Millenium Falcon? Or in a X-Wing/TIE fighter dogfight? Or on a speeder bike in the woods? Or fighting Darth Vader with a lightsaber on a dimly lit platform in Cloud City? Or trading lightsaber parries with Darth Maul in the bowels of the Naboo palace?

2. The merchandising is a distraction from an amazingly well-developed mythical action adventure. When you become a billionaire, everyone starts throwing the worst motives at everything you do. Lucas didn't develop Star Wars to sell action figures and toy starships. He didn't create the Ewoks because he could sell teddy bears; it was because he was making a statement about how overwhelming military might and firepower can be defeated, a la the US and France in Vietnam, Napoleon in Spain, etc. The hero's journey he laid out in the original trilogy and the bigger one in the six episode series is ancient and effective. Lucas is an artistic movie maker who loves to make homages and he is 'blowing a kiss' at the movies of his youth. And he did it incredibly well. He could have made Robocop, but he didn't.

3. Guys my age and the press in general crap all over the prequels and for the most part, it doesn't hold water. The critics can't be 8 or 15 years old again and they're blaming the prequels. Lucas couldn't repeat the initiation of the blockbuster phenomenon, which is the only thing the media cares about when it comes to Star Wars, and so the media panned the movies regardless of how well they did. But young kids love them. My kids, after minimal exposure to the franchise from me, took to SW like Mon Calamarians to water. But get this: they would much rather watch the prequels than the original trilogy. Yes, the prequels lack the grittiness that the original trilogy had, and Harrison Ford livened up the dialogue and acting in the originals. But these changes are the point of the story - how the Star Wars universe changed after the Empire took over. Little kids like Jedi battles, beautiful Queens on beautiful planets and really cool looking spaceships.

4. CGI. Computer generated images. Somehow, Lucas has caught a ton of flak for using lots of computer generated imagery in the prequels. People claim the acting is worse because they think actors can't act in front of a green screen. People complain that it's all a video game. Apparently they think that actors can't act without 360 degrees of realistic scenery, which DOES NOT exist on any movie or TV set or in a play, where 'real' acting takes place in front of an audience too boot. Apparently it's okay to insert immaculate matte paintings on blue screen in the original trilogy, but using hand-painted digital paintings and 3d modeling is beyond the pale. And it's impressive when Peter Jackson does the exact same thing (compare the battle on Naboo to the battle at Minas Tirith). Guess what, 30 years from now, no one is going to fault the prequels for having too much CGI. It'll probably be considered old-fashioned how it was not 100% CGI.

5. Artistically, the whole Star Wars phenomenon has opened up movie-making, story-telling and the sci-fi genre. Lucas refused to limit his vision because of technological limitations and gave everyone permission to do the same in all movie-making, from Spielberg to Cameron. No one would pony up the money for heavy FX films if it weren't for Lucas blazing the path. He also changed story-telling by bringing back morality tales that didn't lean on tired religious dogma for authority but came up with a cool moral code. Darth Vader's bust is not on the National Cathedral just for grins. Lucas also brought back many of the ancient myths, like the virgin birth, that Joseph Campbell identified as nearly genetic predilections we have for story-telling. And everyone was allowed to try everything in sci fi again.

Off to Balticon again

2007-05-23T18:49:00.000-04:00

I'm off to Balticon this Memorial Day weekend, the Maryland sci fi convention. Hopefully I will meet old friends, make new ones and move the ball a bit on the whole sci fi novel writing project, formerly the Secret Project. Each year I get a bit recharged, get some new ideas and feel both pumped up and intimidated by the notion of being a sci fi writer.

I know, you might be thinking that a sci fi convention is all geeks, freaks, and freaky geeks. Yes, that's true: we pretty much form our own ethnic group. Only when we're all together does it become glaringly obvious how similar we are. The stereotypes are true to a large extent. These are the nicest, strangest, smartest non-conformers I've ever run into and I'm proud to be one of their number.

Balticon is not your typical sci fi convention, driven by TV stars, fanboy drooling and new product demos. It has a heavy literary focus, which is nice for us writerly folks. Yes, there are movies, video games and tabletop gaming going on for something like 72 hours straight, but there are also sessions on writing, podcasting, comic books, artwork, medieval dance and costuming. Plus straight up bona fide lectures on physical science subjects (physics, astrophysics, biology, tech, computer science, etc.). Not to mention the dealer room and art show and auction. (There's a masquerade ball and costume contest and live action role play, but I've not been to any of them).

My goal at this con, besides steeping myself in a weekend of sci fi, is to do a bit of networking, be a bit more social, maybe talk to authors, publishers and other wannabes like me. This is not easy for me. My first con two years ago, I was so awestruck by A.C. Crispin that I couldn't even say hi to her in an empty hallway. I mean, I had read all of these books of hers, and what the hell was I going to say that she might have wanted to hear other than incoherent fanboy gushing?

Last year I loosened up a little bit with some success. Networking or casually conversing with the rock stars of certain areas of life has always come very hard for me. I can't help seeing it at times as being fanboy gushing, or sucking up, or being totally phony. Plus, I suck at it, I think. I'd rather have relationships emerge naturally, instinctually, rather than an as a result of a Special Ops surgical strike masquerading as a random meeting. If one thing will sink the writing career and other possible career options, I fear, it is my uncomfort with this most basic level of business dealings. So this is yet another attempt to move the ball a bit on this front as well.

WYSIWYG

2007-05-09T17:16:00.000-04:00

What You See is What You Get

For many people, this is more than a type of word processor, it's a code of personal conduct. I am one of those people and believe in it quite strongly. One of the key ingredients of being true to yourself is being yourself. And yet, it sounds like a radical concept, doesn't it?

I'm even a bit perplexed as to how one can act otherwise. The show ponies who pretend to be workhorses, the people who put on airs, the people who tack into the wind personally all strike me as being dishonest and self-crippling. They expend so much energy trying to be something they are not that they can't play to their own strengths or dwell on their home turf. And most everyone sees through their act anyway. Maybe it's part of their nature to be false, you ask. We're not going to get into a circular discussion though.

On the flip side, some people make a point of being themselves a bit too much. They walk around in a bragging kind of way stomping on any and all rules of decorum that interfere with them acting any way they feel. These people in actuality are really the same as those putting on a front.

I figure, be yourself and let the chips fall where they may. We're all characters in our own way, even the quiet, reticent ones. Yes, there are certain traits that we each have that one would rather not have at times (I talk too much). We can try to rein those weaknesses in where we can and where it's prudent but still be WYSIWYG.

Applesauce Meter Drops to 5%

2007-04-24T20:45:00.000-04:00

The MacBook has gone in for its third hardware repair, and returned. (I'm typing on it now.) The problem this time was overheating: either the logic board failed, the fan broke or the whole thing never worked in the first place. The unit overheated on several occasions. In looking back at how little I noticed the fan, I suspect it never worked and just hadn't overheated until now.

Now, MacBooks have been known to run hot - they ventilate from the back of the unit and underneath, which is problematic given that it is, indeed, a LAPTOP. After the overheat happened the first time I installed some programs to monitor the fans, case temp and CPU temps. The thing would get near 200 Celsius before it shut itself down (Warcraft caused it to happen in about 5-10 minutes). When the Apple Hardware Test came up with a Windowsy-cryptic error code, it went to the Apple Store, which fixed it very quickly and again, under warranty.

So the Applesauce Meter, previously at 90% water (hype) and 10% applesauce (true actual goodness) is now at 95% hype and 5% applesauce. And here is why:

Apple used to be known for kick butt hardware and so-so software (because they wouldn't let other developers make stuff for Macs). Then they rolled out the iMac, the iPod, etc and it was all about this classy looking hardware. Except the hardware was glossy, easy to scratch, and had a very short service life.

Then comes OS X, the Mac operating system built on Unix. And Final Cut for filmmakers, like Steven Soderburgh. And Garage Band. And iTunes. So Apple is pumping out great software and pretty good if overpriced hardware (the Powerbooks and iMacs). Many people, including a friend of mine, claim that the Powerbooks were just about indestructible. That may have been the high point of Apple computing.

Then comes the MacBook. It runs hot, some don't like the razor sharp edge where wrists get cut, etc. The first batch had severe heat issues. Mine was in the second or third run and all that was needed was a firmware update to correct the overheating issue. Supposedly. Overall, the hardware seems kinda crappy. Bad battery, bad case, bad fan/logic board. No wonder the Apple Store can turn these repairs around so fast - they're doing a lot of them. Even Apple fanboys are not pleased. The Mac mini has also failed to really catch on.

Apple now seems hardware poor and software middle income (too little software, but it's good stuff). It's hard to see what the higher prices get you. Running through this all is a Henry Ford-like disregard for the customer. You'll buy whatever junk they dish out because you drank the cool-aid, is what seems to be the Apple culture. They must think their customers are so stupid that the shiny object in their hand will distract them from the lousy design and poor hardware performance. As I'm picking up my computer, there's an Apple guy at the iPod bar explaining to a customer how her iClod's hard drive is dead and hey, you may as well buy another. Oh, and if Steve Jobs gets bored with a product line, kiss it goodbye. (Remember the Apple II? Steve didn't when he pulled the rug out from under it when he rolled out the Macintosh).

Hello, iPhone. Goodbye Apple Computer Company. They dropped computer from the company name. They have also delayed the next iteration of their OS X to put more work into the iPhone. That may be a sign of things to come.

Maybe these 1st year hardware failures are just the shakedown period and this thing will crank for the next five years or so. But already I am disappointed. One more failure and this rig is going to be referred to as my MacBroke. And I may find out exactly how well Apple resell values hold up. If the iPhone is a hit, which I heavily doubt (remember the Newton?) Apple computers might become valued collector's items. So, the Apple Experiment is nearly complete and the cynical side of me may come out looking prophetic.

New Apple slogans:
"Apple: Always Premium Priced Low-quality Electronics."
"Apple, it just costs a lot."
"Apple, the Jaguar of electronics."

WoW, I'm back in.

2007-04-11T18:30:00.000-04:00

This blog was born amidst the wreckage of my last experiment with the gaming genre known as MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role playing game). It was a Star Wars MMORPG and I got bored with it. Mostly it was because the Star Wars game failed to create a Star Wars atmosphere, in part because the MMORPG elements of the game (a player-created society with no actual role playing) failed to produce it. No one wants to be the extras in Star Wars.

But, as I alluded to in the last post, I've been itching to throw World of Warcraft on my Lazy Susan of things I'm doing. There has been some burning for some D&Dish sword and sorcery. I had played a trial version and found it fun and not as hardcore focused as Star Wars. Heck, you get rewarded for not playing WOW continuously. And it's just plain fun.

Plus, Dr. Trackball prohibited me from playing after reading an article about video game widows with WOW-addicted husbands who ignore their families. So I just had to get it.

What can I say, she's never banned me from anything before. I'm pretty sure she can't, anyway.

So I'm back in. Got the game, started a character. And it's fun. Like stepping into the wardrobe and poking around Narnia for a bit. Mini and Micro both love watching over my shoulder as I run around Azeroth, much to Dr. Trackball's chagrin.

"Don't kill the bunny!" Mini says.
"I'm going to get that wild boar threatening it," I say.

"Wonderful things you're exposing them too," Dr. Trackball says.

At least three of us are having a good time.

For those of you without the time or hardware, here's two more addictive web games that will kill some evenings.
Let's go lower now...
Desktop tower defense.

Happy gaming.

The Netflix Queue of Life

2007-03-30T19:23:00.000-04:00

One of the downsides of being self-aware enough to know what you enjoy is that you can be overwhelmed with things you want to do. A lot of people are unfortunate enough not to have this problem, so I don't mean to be whiny, because it literally is a case of drowning in one's own riches. I look at my Netflix queue, with over 140 movies and shows, and I want to see it all at once. The same with fun stuff in my life.

Having a cornucopia of delectable activities to pursue makes the opportunity costs that much more acute. Experiencing flow doing one thing can be interrupted with thoughts about what else you could be flowing while you do. Or just trying to choose can be tough. But you can be relieved that whatever you choose will be something highly enjoyable.

A number of years ago, I decided to teach myself video game programming, in addition to writing a novel, playing video games, reading books, watching movies (and a few TV shows) and of course spending time with the rest of humanity including Dr. Trackball. Obviously, this was not going to work and everything else got less attention, especially the novel. So I had to jettison the project. It had a huge learning curve and the prospects for finishing anything were slim. (Most video games are done by experienced C++ programmers spending a ton of time on them.)

Woody Allen keeps making films in part to distract himself from the empty abyss he thinks that follows death. Not distracting himself just depresses the hell out of him. I have the other problem. I look at any reasonable length human lifespan and lament the inability to do all the really cool stuff one wants to do. My queue runneth over with things.

Currently, in addition to being papa and husband Trackball, I have the novel and other writing, reading books, blogging, working, watching things on my HDTV (Netflix and DVR'd goodies) and of course, playing video games. Oh, too many video games, too little time. And they just keep coming.

In the last bunch of months I've played Pirates, Civilization IV, Space Rangers 2 and Galactic Civilizations II and now am really into Star Wars: Empire at War. I could dive back into any of these. I have dozens more that have aged but not faded. I don't really have time to do all these. And there is one other game out there that has been calling me for months. I can't get it out of my head. Do I put it in the queue? Do I move it to the top?

Is the Queue of Life already overstuffed? Will I ever get to it all? This'll have to wait till next time because Minnie Trackball wants to read a book with me. See what I mean?

UPS and AVADirect: Great Service

2007-03-14T18:47:00.000-04:00

The new computer arrived a little over two weeks after I ordered it from AVADirect, a custom computer builder. UPS kept me up to date on every step of the shipping, even down to the minute when they tried to deliver on a weekday, found no one home, and when they talked to my wife about dropping it off for us to pick up. They let me know all my options for retrieving the package, including picking it up at 8pm that night from a nearby customer center. Kudos, UPS.

The computer was packed in the computer case's box and all the documentation was in the box that the mother board came in, including the original CDs for Vista, etc. Talk about recycling! Hooked the computer up, turned it on and it was great. The only complaint I have is that in naming the computer account, they typoed it 'valued cusomer'. Not a big deal, except it is apparently impossible to rename folders in Vista, so even renaming the account to 'Dr. Trackball' didn't prevent 'valued cusomer' from reappearing on various folders. But that's a Vista problem.

Vista itself is pretty nice and the folder rename is the biggest problem. Games work well on it so far (gushing about Star Wars: Empire at War fits the positive comment thing but will bore you readers) and everyone's happy. The kids can fight over their own computer, we can share the new one and I am still smiling over great service once again.

That's service

2007-02-28T19:14:00.000-05:00

I promised that I would make a bigger effort to highlight good, positive things when I came across them. Boy did I have some kind of positive day yesterday.

My Macbook had a crack in the case resulting from an improperly seated titanium screw. This caused it to snag the plastic case and created a hairline crack. I took it to the Apple store, where not only did they agree to fix it under warranty but to do the repair in the store to minimize my downtime rather than shipping it off to the repair depot. I just had to wait for the part (a new bottom case for the Macbook) to come in to the store.

When it came in, I got a call two days later saying, hey, it's been two days, we're only holding on to the part for another three. I called back Monday night and said I never got the first call. They were willing to extend the time the two lost days for me to get the Macbook in. Nice touch. Since I don't use the laptop on Tuesdays, I figured that I may as well start my downtime on the day I can't use it anyway and ran right it over to the store that night. Seven to ten business days is what you have to expect for us to get this back to you, they said. No prob.

Tuesday, I come home from work and they have left a message: the Macbook is ready. Less than 24 hours. I shoot over to the Apple store, tell them my name and they knew who I am (and this Apple store is quite busy on weekends). I pick it up and am home in about twenty minutes. It's fixed and I have had no downtime. Kudos to Apple on all around great service.

At the same time, we are getting a new computer because the kids have demanded their own PC. Our current one has a dying hard drive but is otherwise a 4 yr old Dell gaming rig that can meet their needs. I have ordered the new one from AVADirect, which does custom builds. They spend 3-5 days doing a 'burn-in' of the computer, once it's built, to make sure it works fine. They were very prompt in getting things underway once I ordered it. It is still being built so we will have to see how that all turns out.

The new computer needs a monitor and the old one needs a hard drive. So I, on the advice of a tech-savvier friend, went through Newegg, which has low prices, fast shipping and all the computer components you would want. I ordered the monitor, with free shipping, and a new hard drive on Sunday, hoping that it would arrive around the same time as the new computer. The Newegg order shipped Monday.

Right before I got Apple's voice mail, I pull in and see my Newegg packages waiting on my front step. One day for a monitor from Jersey and a hard drive from California to get to my house. Apple and Newegg have not only mastered the quick shipping and service thing, but they have gone the extra mile to make you happy. A whole ton of factors (manufacturers, distributors, shippers, websites, employees) have to do their jobs with care and attention to make this happen. Human organizations and systems can work perfectly when they try. It is awesome to behold.

Now if the new computer can show up soon, and everything work right out of the box, that would make this whole thing perfect. But so far, what service!

Dvorak beats Qwerty by aoeuhtns much

2007-02-14T13:12:00.000-05:00

Last year I embarked on an experiment to try the Dvorak keyboard layout for typing to see if it was easier, better, and more comfortable. I'm a sucker for the contrarian method that is reputed to be better, faster and smarter.

Some background first. The Dvorak keyboard is just a keyboard layout that is designed to make typing easier, faster and more comfortable. It has been proven superior to the dreaded, contorted QWERTY. It is available on the keyboard that you are using right now. Here's a picture of the layout:

Learning it was easier than QWERTY and becoming a Dvorak touch typist was about ten times faster. I taught myself by using this website. Switching your keyboard to Dvorak, and being able to toggle between the two can be done pretty easily in the control panel for Windows (look under languages, not keyboard). Go ahead and play around with it. The letter placement is much more intuitive, the beginning steps are easier to follow than on the QWERTY. Note the home row keys (where your fingers rest on the center row of letters) for the two layouts:

QWERTY:
asdf jkl;

Dvorak:
aoeu htns

Look at the Dvorak home row, especially the two sets of four letters. Vowels to the left, consonants to the right. The other two vowels are on the left - 'i' is next to 'u' and 'y' is on the QWERTY 't', a short jump up from the 'i'.

Think of typing the word 'that' on this keyboard. Roll your right middle and index finger for the 'th', then left pinky for the 'a' and then the right middle for the 't'. No stretchy stretchy. On QWERTY, it would be stretch left and up to the 't', stretch left to the 'h', then 'a' and stretch up and left 't', and with the same hand.

After about a year of use, I can say definitively that Dvorak is much, much better.

Not only will I not go back to QWERTY, but I have found that I can't even if I wanted to. I've lost the QWERTY touch typing ability completely and when confronted with such a layout it is back to hunt and peck. A final knock against it - it doesn't stick in the mind when not used for a while.

So, like the trackball is to the mouse, the Dvorak keyboard is much better and easier to learn than QWERTY, which was designed to be a slow pain in the comma. I recommend that everyone learn it. It is available on every keyboard on every operating system. As a touch typist, you won't need to have the letter stickers on the keys correspond to what you get when you strike them. How many of you will be flexible enough to give it a try? Some won't want to throw away that long and painful investment in learning QWERTY, but Dvorak won't be as long or painful and you'll really crank when you are proficient.

The bigger question is what to do when the younger trackballs are ready to move on from the QWERTY hunt and peck to actual keyboarding? Do I let them join the elephant QWERTY touch-typist club or do I induct them in the enlightened cheetah club of Dvorak typing goodness? In the age of PC's and custom desktop accounts, the choice of keyboard layout is pretty much personal (but your computer support people may be surprised when they try to use it). Dr. Trackball may not like the Dvorak option, fearing that the trackballs will be outcasts, but if I convince her to switch over...

The Handy Headshaker

2007-01-27T14:58:00.000-05:00

Picking up on the thread of a theme from earlier posts, I've been paying closer attention to criticism lately. Some think that I am too critical in general, but in a talk show world, anything short of glowing affirmation is often seen as a personal attack and insult. When I criticize, it's of something that to me seems avoidable or fixable and I am always willing to suggest an alternative. Having said that, I have retreated from criticizing people or things that are unwilling or unable to change.

I look like a grinning fool compared to one unique brand of critics. Have you ever noticed that handymen, plumbers, window, roof, flooring, other construction workers and other very blue collar guys have are always dumping on their colleagues' work? It seems like no job is complete until the expert-on-site puts his hands on his hip, shakes his head sagely. Then he will launch into one of these wry rants:

Whoever did this didn't know what he was doing.
Whoever did this didn't follow the building code (or other guidelines).
Whoever did this cut corners.
Whoever did this didn't know what he was doing, didn't follow building code and cut corners.
Whoever did (technical jargon) should never have done that with (other technical jargon that sounds vaguely irrelevant) like that.

Followed by: this should never have passed inspection and whoever did it should have been fired and you are lucky it didn't kill you. If it was done a long time ago, then a mini-lecture on the history of how bad things were done in the old days is forthcoming. If it was done recently, then they don't do things like they used to, how hard it is to hire good people and maybe a tablespoon of outrage. The Handy Headshake does not happen only in case of one having a problem and therefore inevitably inviting the guy to find some failing or error. This also happens when one is upgrading something or having work done on something that by all appearances is perfectly fine.

If you have not run into this often, turn on any home improvement show. They rip up an old floor and find incompetence and laziness. Inspect a roof leak and discover subterfuge and deception. Inspect a house and discover the results of alcoholic new construction crews. Apparently no one has ever built anything correctly ever and everyone else involved in building things is a complete moron. And building inspectors are all corrupt or too incompetent to breathe properly. I challenge anyone to mention an experience with a handy person who comes to do a job and marvels at the excellent worksmanship of everything. I bet Bill Gates has people fixing stuff in his ginormous mansion saying things like "I don't know what they were thinking when they installed this, but you never leave insulation so close to the can of a recessed light!"

Can you imagine doing this in your job? Shaking your head at every single piece of work that someone else has done mostly because you were not the one who did it? There are those who try to pull such things in office environments and other jobs, but it doesn't work because the other person is right there and often the complaints are bogus. For example, it would never work for the topping person at Subway to complain about the toasting job done on the bread, or the way the meat is laid out.

Now, some of this may be done just to boost the credibility and billing rate of the current expert-on-site. Maybe it's done to induce the customer to frantically throw money at the guy in hopes he corrects everything. Or maybe there really are no standards and these guys are all repressed art critics. Since they are usually agreeable and likeable guys, they are not the can't-be-pleased-everything-snobs, another critics group of note. And it's too prevalent to be some common personality trait.

Of course, often following on the heels of this wise dissection of the previous guy's poor workmanship (it's never the materials that fail, is it?) is the handy guy not knowing how to fix the problem, repair the damage, make right what once went wrong. How fast can a handy guy go from criticism to saying "let's see what happens if I do this" or "I don't know if this will work"? How can nearly all these guys can be genius enough to spot crappy worksmanship but clueless enough to not be able to suss out the proper remedy?

Once you notice the wry critic act about to begin, you will find yourself hard-pressed to not smile. The smart-asses amongst us may try to join in, or even pre-empt the headshaker by doing their own. Please don't do this. Also, don't call them on this little act: it's as impolite as snarling at salespeople that you have approached when they try to build some goodwill with you by making small talk.

Now, you might think that this post has come about because of some recent run-in with the handy type. Think again: I decided to do this when I have not any recent such experiences to make it more generalizable and to show that I do not have any kind of ax to grind. I actually find this complaining kind of adorable and reassuring. In fact, if one of these guys can't find anything to complain about, there is only one conclusion you can draw:

He's the idiot everyone else is complaining about.

Playing better is one giant leap for humankind

2007-01-10T18:57:00.000-05:00

For those who accuse the ToT of being too negative, pessimistic, etc. I am going to keep throwing back at you some of the really positive things I notice in the world.

Today, I give you an advancement in playgrounds. New York City, a place I am gaining more respect for over time, is on its way to installing a better playground. A father and architect named David Rockwell is trying to make playgrounds more kid-friendly. The one planned in the NYC will have pulleys and foam blocks, allow you to move buckets of sand from one place to another, play with water and generally engage kids on a deeper level than the old standby of swings, slides and climbing equipment.

Some may ask: what is wrong with slides and swings? Aren't they good enough, it's just a playground after all. My response is: why not try to improve it? Don't we all remember being kids and wishing that the playground had more to offer? The monkey bars and sunken tires of the 1950s and 1960s era gave way to the wooden quasi-castles and rope bridges of the 1980s, and they were a huge improvement. Then the 1990s came with plastic tubes to crawl through, kid-size rockwalls and entire hideaway spots and neat surprises. As our understanding of kids and child development expands, why not keep up to speed with the playthings?

That is the sweet morsel at the heart of human advancement and humanism. We keep finding that our capacities are greater than we once thought and not only can we handle more and doing it better, we're better off handling more and doing it better. Kids are the epitome of this realization: they are savvy little scientists who use play, imagination and fantasy to deconstruct the world, examine how it works and doesn't work, and then put it back together. And have fun doing it.

Three year old Micro Trackball is always killing off his superheroes because it's how he explores the concept of death. He has no real idea of what it means, but he role plays it on pretend people (or pretends it happens to real people "when I die...") to learn what it means and what it doesn't. No amount of explanation from his parents or big sister substitutes for having Superman 'die' over and over again. Minnie Trackball, at seven, is doing much the same thing by 'fortune-telling' where she uses these silly paper things to predict your car, job, best friend, favorite color and a bunch of other odd things. She's play-exploring what it means to be grown up (and driving us nuts in the process).

The adult world is slowly waking up to the idea that kids are not stupid pets who have to learn to become smart - the smarts are there and they hit the ground learning, if only the adults wouldn't get in the way. This doesn't just work with the preschool set and older, but infants too.

Now the new playground may fail. The little people will vote with their feet and let the city know. But it's always worth it to keep trying. Someone will see this playground and will be inspired to improve on it. That is how progress happens. That is how Rockwell came to design this park. Every generation of parents should stand around and marvel at their kids' schools, toys and opportunities and say "I wish we had this when we were kids."

Now if someone would put effort into improving playgrounds for all us adults too, we could make the world better at a faster pace. The IDEO folks are doing it, but they haven't got to my office just yet.

Trackball's first annual snapshot

2007-01-01T15:51:00.000-05:00

Resolutions are for the somewhat deluded. They at least are cognizant of the need to change, but are deluded enough to make a half-hearted attempt. If you need/want to make a change, you shouldn't wait for the calendar to flip to get started. Anything that has to be resolved will likely not take root, much like posting a mission statement on the wall: if it's not ingrained and omnipresent, a one-time declaration isn't going to make it happen.

Growing up in My Shire, the new year was always greeted with rounds of well meaning and ambitious toasts and promises and plans, none of which ever happened. It was ultimately depressing to hear the same fantasies from the same people year after year without any execution. It was almost like stating that some personal problem would be addressed was sufficient. Now I know that lots of people feel that the new year is the time to make a fresh start and they make an effort, but all that happens is they all clog up my gym for the next six to eight weeks. By March they will be back to where they were in December - on their couch watching Survivor.

However, at least they try. Some people have either given up on self-change or they no longer feel any pressure to do what is right in their lives. The idea of self-improvement has lost a lot of its luster recently, despite the ever increasing sales of self-help books and paraphernalia. (Maybe people believe that reading a self-help book constitutes all they need to do to self-improve.) People in their 20s and 30s, especially those with helicopter parents, aspire to be the same as their parents rather than to do or be something better. They just don't want others to expect much from them.

I hate that.

There is a growing feeling that one's shortcomings shouldn't be dealt with, not even ignored, but should be proudly displayed as means of self-identification. Obese, racist, misogynist, illiterate, mediocre, homophobic, mean, bankrupt, etc. have somehow morphed into integral parts of personality rather than hangnails to be dealt with. People use the victimhood culture to blame their problems on others, or the ceaseless parade of 'flawed' characters in popular entertainment --Jack Bauer-- or their increasingly placating religious beliefs to justify behavior they know is wrong ('everyone has to have a vice').

I hate that even more.

There's a dark and deep line between giving up on changing parts of oneself that are not changeable and eschewing any improvements as impossible just to let oneself off the hook. I realize that there are several parts of my personality and presence that need work. That work has been ongoing, and some of it may be ultimately unsuccessful as things that seemed changeable are really unchangeable.

Some have said that my intolerance of other's foibles (and my own) is a big failing of mine. As a humanist who believes that humans can improve themselves and their world, this is a religious belief not a failing. High expectations are not a sin in any moral code I subscribe to. Go ahead and try to ding me for thinking that you and I can be better and do better than we are now. I dare you.

With that resolution crap resolved, I do think New Year's is a good time to set down a time capsule of sorts on where one is and what is going on. Forget trying to leap the moon today, just reflect on where you are. Could be interesting to collect them over the course of years and see how things change. Here is where ToT is at right now:

Been using the Dvorak keyboard layout for a year now and feel comfortable enough with it that I am back up to my old typing speed but without the carpal problems.
Going to get laser eye correction surgery and dump the eyeglasses that have been on my face since the mid 1980s.
The HDTV has been procured and the beginning pieces of the Lair are ready to be assembled. (It will have a retro gaming center with TV, VCR, Nintendo and Super Nintendo.) Someday the Lair will have HD.
The first novel is in it's second draft and is awaiting feedback from its first readers.
The Mac experiment has produced some mixed results, but so far more good than bad.
Tried Aikido but it just wasn't for me.
Still manage to play: with the little Trackballs, with video games and with Legos

Mac Crack

2006-12-23T20:43:00.000-05:00

On July 4th I started an experiment with Apple's Mac when I bought a MacBook. I also started a measure of how much of Apple's hype is legit and how much is just hype. Time for an update.

The Applesauce meter was last at 80% water/20% apple, where the more water, the more fake Apple's hype. It shifted to 75/25 when I went looking for software and security updates. Not only was the process real simple, but the security updates actually sped up the MacBook's boot up process. I was stunned.

Now, two serious problems have popped up with the Mac. First, I noticed a hairline crack in the side of the case, near a steel screw by the optical drive slot. Let me say that I have treated the MacBook very gently, even bought a cushy backpack to carry it around in. The polycarbonate case is supposed to be near indestructible and the white MacBook's gleaming case makes you want to treat it very gently.

I checked the Mac site's support discussions and there are others who have had this problem. Some had the case replaced completely, and then had it crack again. The great number of cracks were stress type cracks in the case in the back hinge area or the screen's case top. Some people managed to get it replaced under warranty, others not. A trip to the Apple store resulted in them saying that they consider any such damage on a unit owned for several months to be the owner's fault. How convenient for them. Apple has a reputation for being stingy and unresponsive when it comes to support - see the iPod battery replacement fiasco.

The second problem is that in the last couple of days the battery, which has been providing about 4 hours plus since I bought it, decided on Thursday to go into tailspin and ran down in about 2.5 hours. The computer is about five plus months old - way too early for the battery to head into senility. It might be just in need of a calibration, which I did on Friday. It's still giving about 2.5 hours of charge, according to it's own estimate.

These are two hardware problems coming one after another. While Mac has fine software (Mac OS X rocks) and nicely designed hardware, there are people who complain that Apple goes cheap on the hardware. Case in point is the iPod case, which scratches real easy supposedly and launched a whole industry in case covers and skins. The early MacBooks also were knocked for running really hot.

The Applesauce meter now stands at 90/10. In the past I have faulted Apple for being so hyped about its design acumen that the design actually is poor. The crack in the case may be a sign of that. If it doesn't spread (I am not paying $300 to fix it), then it won't be a big deal. The battery, on the other hand, I will have to deal with if another recalibration doesn't fix it. That has to be a warranty-covered repair.

The Mac experiment is edging closer to being not just a failure, but possibly a mistake. The ideal situation, as one Mac analyst said, would be if Mac OS X could be put on non-Apple PCs and laptops to have the best of both worlds.

Evangelicals' morality is left behind in real time stupidity

2006-12-13T18:07:00.000-05:00

Video games, like comics and Dungeon & Dragons before them, have become the societal punching bag for anything that anyone who might have played one has done wrong. Oh yeah, let's say violent video games, although no one really makes much of a distinction. Never heard someone denounce violent video games and extol the virtues of nonviolent video games. They probably don't think they exist.

The hypocrisy of this situation was brought to the fore with Columbine, where people blamed pretend violence for causing, inciting, training those two nutjobs to kill in real life. The truth is, that like any other form of imaginary play, violent video games are not bad. They are safe sandboxes where people can explore lives, worlds and conditions they would never do in real life. They can even be good where normal, natural aggressive feelings are vented in a safe environment. There will be more about this in a future post.

The stupidity about violent video games continues now, but has flipped all around because of religion, with the idiotic Left Behind video game. The Left Behind book series is a Christian fantasy series where the Rapture occurs and all the good people go to heaven and those left behind on Earth duke it out with the satanic nonbelievers as judgment day approaches. It's a thin cover for evangelical jihadist-Crusader fantasies. Now there's a video game about it.

The game is violent and is predicated on a Christian crusade to convert or kill the unbelievers. But since Christians are committing the Christian violence, it's all okay:

The game's makers contend that the violence from the good side — the Tribulation Force — is exclusively defensive, and should not be seen as contrary to church teachings.

"Christians are quite clearly taught to turn the other cheek and to love their enemies," the company website says. "It is equally true that no one should forfeit their lives to an aggressor who is bent on inflicting death."

Oh, so Christian violence is okay in self-defense (like in Doom, where the mobs attack first, right?). And, they point out, there's no police killed and no decapitations or blood. Apparently all of the police are sent to heaven in the rapture. The Trackball is cursoring over some serious bullshit here.

Christian websites that review the game speak in glowing terms about how Mom and Dad can play this with junior and how it is 'inspirational entertainment'. Look Mom, that evil nonbeliever just wouldn't convert, and he was getting kind of all 666-twitchy, so I took him out with an attack helicopter! Funny, but some of those same sites, endorsed by Focus on the Family, knock games like Call of Duty 2 for the same kind of self-defense violence that is in this one. Nazis were Christians, remember, and killing them is a bit more objectionable than wiping out 'nonbelievers' by the truckload, apparently.

If you are feeling some deja vu here, it's because the same thing happened when Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ came out. It apparently was bloody and gory as all get out, but because it had religious content, it was all okay to Focus on the Family.

You'd think that leaders of a religion would take a second and ponder a scenario that is straight out of Hypocrisy 101. Can we throw a cross in Grand Theft Auto IV and it will be okay to them?

Am I opposed to this game because it is violent? No. Do I think the books should be banned? No - the only way to ridicule these things is to put them out in the open. I do oppose the rest of the world sitting by and letting these fundamentalists spew hatred and in response simply turn the cheek only in their case because they are Christians. Maybe when one of the wack job fans of the series goes on a shooting rampage or tries to blow up a mosque or a temple or another government building, the media will raise an eyebrow at the Left Behind books and games.

Until then, please Goddess, forgive these double-talking assholes who have no moral core at all and just want to promote their religious PR. I pray to Humanity that they will see through this fig leaf of religious cover and have the courage to identify hatred and religious intolerance regardless of which invisible avenger in the sky is being invoked.