Alter S. Reiss's writing journal

classics_cat @ 1:59am: My first double-dactyl
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brisingamen @ 7:24am: Much more like it!
I woke this morning at 5 a.m., after seven solid hours of joined-up sleep. I cannot say I as yet feel perfect, but I feel a hell of a lot better than I did over the weekend, and I do not think I will be spending this morning watching beach volleyball. I may even turn out to go delivering tonight, which will also be progress! I haven't felt much like taking sustained exercise for some weeks, and am still suffering from a surfeit of good food in Kansas.

Last night I finally completed and sent off the review of the problematic scholarly text I have been struggling with for so long, which means I am free, free at last, and can go back to all the other things I'm supposed to be reading, reviewing and writing about. I cannot tell you what a weight off my mind this is. It was one of those moments of wondering whether it was me being thick or whether this book was as obscure as I thought it was. Selected highlights read to PK suggested it wasn't me but I wasn't sure. As it happened, I spoke to someone at SFRA who, it turned out, had also reviewed the book and had found it equally problematic. It's been a struggle to read it, a struggle to review it, but done, done, done.

Last night I also started John Rieder's Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction, which I like already, possibly because I can a) understand whole sentences of it, b) can understand whole paragraphs of it, and c) the ideas and theories behind it seem to make sense. Compared to the previous book it is a model of clarity. However, I think it may be a model of clarity anyway.

And this morning, I had an email from the scholarly journal I now read for (after a few hiccups getting started), and they are pleased with the report I sent them at the back end of last week, so go me.

PK and I are planning to go to the BSFA meeting next Wednesday (Gwyneth Jones) and as PK is on holiday for a week, we thought we'd take in a couple of exhibitions. American Prints at the British Museum was a definite, but PK has also expressed interest in going to the British Orientalist painting exhibition at the Tate, which I wanted to revisit, so I am making a second trip to that, which I am looking forward to, especially as now I've read through the not-a-catalogue. This means, I think, that my projected blog piece will be emerging shortly afterwards. In which case, I am much relieved that the projected tube strike has now been called off. Walking between Charing Cross and the British Museum is no problem, but I think it would have been a bit of a hike to/from Chelsea, assuming one couldn't find an uncrowded bus.

Am still wondering vaguely if I can squeeze in a trip to the Psycho Building exhibition at the Hayward, before it finishes, and I want to go to the Wyndham Lewis exhibition if it's already on, not to mention the skeletons at the Wellcome. And there's the Rothko coming up this autumn. I am delighted my brain's woken up again, but it feels like a dam burst, and not in a good way.

And to set the seal on the morning, a cloud of blue tits and great tits is storming joyfully through the trees in the garden. It's difficult to feel unhappy when a large group of small birds is hanging around outside one's window, cheerfully beating shit out of one another.

fallenpegasus @ 10:30pm: An excellent summary of what's wrong with the MSM

Once again, the decisions we make,
the attitudes we have,
and the prejudices we express
are all entirely rational,
when analysed in terms of
the flawed information we are fed,
only half chewed,
from the mouths of morons. link

fallenpegasus @ 5:04pm: Tweets for Today

• 01:53 I'm at 1429 E Aloha St, Seattle, WA 98112, USA - bkite.com/01iAD #
• 04:55 I'm at AMF Imperial Lanes (2101 22nd Ave S, Seattle, WA 98144, USA) - bkite.com/01iFl #
• 15:33 I'm at 1429 E Aloha St, Seattle, WA 98112, USA - bkite.com/01iQy #
• 15:37 I'm at 1429 E Aloha St, Seattle, WA 98112, USA - bkite.com/01iQH #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

fallenpegasus @ 4:04pm: I actually found a US Election news source that's actually worth more than a bucket of warm sh*t.
http://www.FiveThirtyEight.com/

It analyzes local polling data using the same advanced statistical techniques that have been refined picking apart the sport of baseball.

And the commentary blog is well written by someone who seems to have taken a personal interest in the process without having drunk koolaid from either party, either side, or the Traditional Media, or from the Washington approach.

It might disappoint me.

But until it does, I just may finally start following the election.

At least there will now be hard numbers behind my despair.

fallenpegasus @ 3:44pm: Band "Offspring", Album: "Americana"
An entire album about having bad ex's.

akirlu @ 3:22pm: Best Birthday Wishes
Happy Birthday to ceilog! Many happy returns of the day.

fallenpegasus @ 2:58pm: Dear LazyWebs: Wanted, a simple USB GPRS modem
I want a simple do-hicky that is just a USB GPRS modem. I plug a SIM into it, and it presents either a USB network interface, or else a USB serial PPP interface that Mac Leopard already knows how to dial out on.

No special host drivers.

Does such a thing exist?

yendi @ 3:15pm: I needed this today
"I'm Vin Diesel. Don't fuck with me."

(NSFW, of course).

classics_cat @ 11:36am: This is just to say
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fallenpegasus @ 9:27am: "Rebecca Rules"

Lots of people retain the notion that our self-interest is not hard-wired into us in the same way that our physical attributes are hard-wired into us; many people suppose that with just the right upbringing or education, or with enough self-discipline, a human being can be made non-self-interested.

This notion is bunk.

It has no more validity than the belief that, say, a man can run as fast as a cheetah if he trains with sufficient diligence, or that a woman can grow an extra set of arms if only she tries hard enough to do so. Nurture plays a role in conditioning who we are, physically and mentally, but our fundamental phenotype and mental attributes are hard-wired into us.

link

classics_cat @ 11:13am: ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

classics_cat @ 10:55am: ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

yendi @ 10:49am: Tuesday links
It's the last week before classes begin, so things are super-insane. Here are ten things that have distracted me.

1. 100 writers who have never won a Hugo. Of course, there are more than 100 writers who have never won, but since this list was crafted to list folks we might have expected to have won Hugos, it omits Piers Anthony, Terry Goodkind, Stephen Donaldson, and John Norman.

2. Neil Diamond. As seen through a crappy bagel.

3. Burger King's veggie porn scandal. Shocking.

4. PETA: Still run by assholes.

5. Food-related album covers.

6. AC/DC's new album is being sold exclusively at Wal-Mart. Wait. What?

7. It's been linked everywhere, but here's H.P. Lovecraft as a Whitman Sampler Copywriter.

8. For $149, you can get a "video autograph" of your favorite celebrity (assuming your fave is Shatner, Hulk Hogan, or Danica Patrick).

9. The RIAA is finally forced to pay for their harassment of an innocent women. Here's hoping they keep having to pay until they're broke.

10. Finally, here's Walt Disney's Sin City -- Disney princesses filtered through Frank Miller's Whore-O-Vision.

yendi @ 9:04am: Wii Fit!
As some of you know, we've been trying to get a Wii Fit for ages, but not willing to pay the exorbitant markups that the Ebay and Amazon resellers sell it for.

Amazon "limits" buyers to three at a time when they get them in stock, which is horseshit, since that just means that the resellers buy three at time (or end-users buy one, then buy two more to resell and make their Wii Fit effectively free). Even the stores that limit purchases to one sell out the second they arrive.

But a little over two weeks ago, littlebuhnee noticed that they were listed in some of her book clubs. Since I still have a Sci-Fi book club (home of the Alien Sybian) membership sitting unused, I logged in, and there it was!

Of course, being the SFBC, it took three weeks, but yesterday, a shiny new Wii Fit showed up on our doorstep!

Thanks to Wii Fit, I've determined that I'm incapable of hitting virtual soccer balls with my head, although I'm damned good at getting smacked in the face with virtual flying panda heads. And it's good to be aware of your limits.

The game itself is damned neat; I've only done about ten minutes of working out so far, but I'm impressed by the interface and the actual exercises. The minigames are also effective, and unlike, say, Wii Sports, the games are aimed at making me work out, not leaving me in pain for days.

xiphias @ 8:02am: Some comments about my family
I just left a comment in wordweaverlynn's LJ, as we were talking about family, and parental aspirations. And I talked a little bit about my maternal grandfather. I liked what I wrote, so I'm copying it here.
( Read more... )

brisingamen @ 7:08am: Links instead of thinks ...
A perennial topic – the pop versus soda map

aethereal_girl @ 8:49am: Maimonides' Laws of Repentance and Lois McMaster Bujold's Memory, Chapter 1
( Maimonides' Laws of Repentance and Lois McMaster Bujold's Memory: an Essay in Honor of Ohio is Coming to Kick Your Ass with Science Fiction Day: Chapter 1: Confession. Long, with spoilers. )

Back to the introduction

aethereal_girl @ 8:42am: Maimonides' Laws of Repentance and Lois McMaster Bujold's Memory
Happy Ohio is Coming to Kick Your Ass with Science Fiction Day!

I don't live in Ohio now, but I used to. Coincidentally, the same is true of Lois McMaster Bujold. The same is not true of Maimonides, sadly, but what can you do.

Have an essay! Or rather, have an introduction to, and a little bit later the first chapter of, an essay. The essay itself is not quite done but it should consist of an introduction and four chapters eventually. I'll be puting up the rest of the chapters within the next couple of days, if all goes according to plan.

Onwards!

( Maimonides' Laws of Repentance and Lois McMaster Bujold's Memory: an Essay in Honor of Ohio is Coming to Kick Your Ass with Science Fiction Day: Introduction: What is Repentance? With spoilers. )

Chapter 1

fallenpegasus @ 5:27pm: Project 365, Day 225: Brachiosaurus at O'Hare Airport

heleninwales @ 10:20pm: Caernarfon Castle Picture Tour -- Part 1
sartorias had the nice idea of requesting pictures of castles. If anyone out there is writing a story with a castle in it, there are lots of pictures and links to more pictures here...

Completely by chance, this morning G announced unexpectedly that he needed to go to Caernarfon this afternoon. I volunteered to drive him there because a) his Daihatsu is actually waiting for a part and though driveable, is perhaps better left at home and b) it meant I could take lots of pictures.

His meeting was probably going to last for an hour or so, but I have an annual membership to CADW (Heritage in Wales) who look after lots of ancient monuments, so it wasn't going to cost anything to go in and therefore I didn't need to spend hours there in order to justify the entrance fee.

By some miracle, I got an hour without rain. I did then get totally drenched walking back to the car park, but at least I got to play with the camera a bit more.

NB: These are virtually un-tweaked, so they're illustrative rather than artistic. :)



( More pictures behind here... )

I will have more at the weekend. No time to process more pictures now and I'm back in work tomorrow.

classics_cat @ 1:26pm: ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

classics_cat @ 9:25am: Blargh, Monday
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brisingamen @ 12:49pm: I suppose this means I really am not well.
I've just spent half an hour watching Team GB (when did it become Team GB exactly? How very 1970s) fail to win anything in the women's asymmetric bars. All those little girls decorated in glittery hair gel and more barrettes than you can throw a stick at – scary. I suppose the only good thing is that at least it wasn't the women's floor exercises so we didn't have the inane smiles and meaningless balance poses too. (I infinitely prefer watching the men's floor exercises because they actually do things that seem to have a point.)

Am forced to the conclusion that nonetheless I really am going to have to spend the rest of the day sitting in front of the tv, watching crappy DVDs and knitting because this is pretty much all I'm fit for. This is not what I want to do, but I otherwise have the attention span of a brain-damaged flatworm, and the knitting will at least assuage the protestant work ethic part of my brain that says tv is sinful unless I do something else as well.

However, today is possibly not the day to recommence doing battle with knitting my first sock, so back to the lacy scarf, if I can find it.

Later: found scarf, remembered how to knit it, knitted for hours and managed about an inch or so of scarf, watched three hours of of dvd about holes, caves and bunkers under Britain. Scary. Cheered up X who rang up in distress because his typing chair fell apart under him, and said he could borrow my dvds about holes in the ground, because some of them have tube trains in them.

Watched four grown men with teeny bats stand around a teeny table, beating a teeny ball round said teeny table, as though it was really important. Apparently, it was.

Appear to have slipped into alternative universe where this kind of thing is quite normal. I want to be well again so the world makes sense again.

brisingamen @ 11:39am: One for the LJ hivemind ...
It's that time of year when I start thinking about how to up my academic game.

I am still, in my view, weak at things like note-taking and structuring the process of note-taking, and also on outlining/structuring essays/articles. Yes, I get good results, but there have to be, if not easier, then more productive and less exhausting and angst-ridden ways of achieving them.

So, if you have any useful techniques you'd care to impart, or really good computer tools you'd like to point me at (shareware/freeware preferred, or else a very cogent argument as to why I need to spend X amount on this absolute must-have item, and I am on a PC), I'd very much like to hear about them so I can start thinking about how I want to approach the next term.