David

10:47 pm: Books for sale! (open to all)
(This entry open to all. If you know anyone interested, send 'em my way.)

In preparation for a potential fast need to get packed and move, the first purge of books is happening - and it's both easier and as difficult as I expected it to be. Tomorrow I hit the used bookstore, and see if they're interested in such things as my Spenser: For Hire books, some of my Clive Barker books, and a few other random things. There are a few items that are of special interest though, and I'm offering those to folks who might come across this note first, just in case.

(I was going to host these on LJ, but I'm on a slow borrowed internet. So I have a Facebook gallery instead.

Most obscurely, I have an ARC of "A Game of Thrones" by George RR Martin (complete with note from the publisher thanking you for giving it a chance) and a chapbook release of "Lila the Werewolf" by Peter S. Beagle.


And, finally, I have a number of medieval cooking and food resources, of varying authenticity, from "Curye on Inglysch" (Early English Text Society original version) to "Food and Drink in Medieval Poland".
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These items are being offered to my friends first, and maybe on Ebay next.

More items coming soon, including possibly some of my more obscure Discworld stuff (autographed "Where's My Cow?" Science of Discworld, etc), and some of my autographed stuff. I will entertain offers for my Neil Gaiman signed "Strange Little Girls" program from the Tori Amos tour, that he wrote the stories for. It also doubles as a calendar, and will be especially useful for that when 2001 rolls around again. I'm not sure how to price that stuff, nor even how much I want to let go of it. It holds memories, but memories aren't doing me much good right now.

I also have a crapton of CDs (probably over 600) and a bunch of DVDs to part with. Lists of those will be coming soon.

05:23 pm: This is my brain on Gaskells...
Background: I'd taken a 2 hour nap after going to Hubba Hubba on Friday night, and then heading to Dickens Saturday. Then I went directly to Gaskells. My food intake all day was low.

So, body needs food, but is getting mostly sugar. Craving for protein. Hrm...brains. Brains are protein right? This is how zombies really came into being - a combination of lack of sleep, and the body's need for food. And then there's everyone who says "I'll sleep when I'm dead."

We shouldn't refer to them as the "walking dead". Calling them the "sleepwalking dead" is far more appropriate.

10:48 pm: Silly online game reminder (Because they're all silly online games)
I'm currently playing a game called The Lacuna Expanse, a browser-based non-turn oriented resource allocation game. It's probably akin to Farmville, but without the social engineering aspects of it, not being tied into Facebook, and not evil. I can't be certain, because I haven't played Farmville.

In any case, it's an addictive little game, and there's a contest running that gives me resources for mentioning the site, and providing a link to it, so that's what I'm doing. It may be the game that's keeping me away from WoW, although I was kinda doing that on my own anyway.

I seem to have hooked groblek already, so it's got the Seal of Approval from two different geeks. Also, the game is only about 6 weeks old, so there's still plenty of time to get in while the getting is good.

Oh, yeah. It's free, too.

03:50 am: The Lacuna Expanse log [an experiment in RP]
Year 0: Our proverbial bags are packed, resources stored away and everything we think we should need to settle a new world is ready to go. Normal inter-galactic travel is, of course, impractical, but the existence of multiple worlds through a fold in space we have called the Moon rift looks like it will get us to region of space ripe with opportunity. Sadly, the telemetry we get from our probes seem to indicate it's a one-way trip - information travels through a narrow beam, but matter just floats right by it.

Our colony is named after the battle cry of an obscure comic book character. If we meet any enemies, we hope it will confuse them as much as it confuses us. But never mind that. We leave soon.

Month 1, new colony time: We are not alone. We've always suspected that life existed in other solar systems, other galaxies, but until now we hadn't encountered any. Now we have. We were in the process of setting up the colony, the farms, the mines, the power plants, when a message came in. One of welcome One of peace. But one that has made us cautious. There is a group out there called The Lacuna Expanse. Apparently this is their system. They say they welcome us, and have much to trade, and all they need is some substance referred to as Essentia.

We remain suspicious, but they offer gifts without question, and with few requirements. They are leading us down a path we would have gone down on our own. So we follow the tasks they ask for us, waiting, always waiting, for the other shoe to drop.

Basketball is a peaceful planet. We can only hope it stays that way.

Year 1, new colony time: We are thriving. The Essentia given to us by The Lacuna Expanse, our neighbors we have not seen, is as wonderous a substance as they claim. The crops grow faster, the mines become more efficient, bald people regrow hair and it even makes fungus burgers taste better. It's no wonder they are on the lookout for this.

They have sent us plans for some manner of planetary receiver that connects us to something called Network 19. Through it, they claim, we can find out what is going on all around us. An interesting proposition, that we will likely take them up on.

Supposedly there is a mole in their organization that is giving us these gifts of Essentia and the Network 19 plans. But we've seen this strategy of trust and suspicion before. We are using our intelligence counter-measures, sooner than we anticipated.

Year 2, new colony time: Network 19 is a blessing and a curse. We are truly not alone, and it was a shock to learn just how not alone we really are. Not only is it a populated universe, it is also a noisy one. Our probes show no inhabited planets nearby, but we continue to hear of the exploits of other races. Empires, as The Lacuna Expanse refers to them. It is difficult to say how correct they are in using that term, but hopefully we will be ready, should we ever meet. We are increasing our technology as much as we can, in the hopes of not only being able to stave off an unseen enemy, but to expand, so that we shall not fall, all in one place.

Year 3, new colony time: Success! Our second colony is well on its way. The planet we chose was rich in resources, but smaller than we would have hoped, but we are not minding that - it is enough that we are no longer limited to one planet. Also, it appears a wider variety of food grows on that planet; it will be good to have more food to choose from. There are only so many ways to prepare beetles.

We are also learning just how dependent we nearly became on The Lacuna Expanse. Without the "gifts" they offered, building this colony is a slower task. But we have learned lessons, and we are applying them.

We are also sending out probes, carefully and cautiously, looking for friends, neighbors and new planets to expand to. It is a big galaxy, but not so big that we cannot leave our mark.

Year 4, new colony time: The Moon Rift appears to be closing. This will likely be our last message.

While The Lacuna Expanse is an unknown quantity, that may or may not be an enemy, we have discovered a race that we are less in doubt about. The Saybeen Demesne, as they call themselves (although they spell it differently), appeared out of nowhere, declared themselves as enemies of everyone, and have apparently forcefully taken over worlds. It is our hope that we will escape their notice, even as we explore and expand to new worlds near us. But we are also preparing for war.

We hope that the silence from our old home is indicative of caution, and a desire to avoid homesickness, and not a sign of anything worse from our homeworld. We hope these messages have found you well. We hope these messages have found you.

Should another rift open elsewhere it may lead here as well. https://us1.lacunaexpanse.com/#referral=b41e006f-f987-3895-b1c9-7496b2c8880e is the code that might put you in touch with us, if you land in the same place.

Unorthodox Economic Revenge indeed. Hiss...

04:08 pm: My time-wasting browser based game addiction redux
Lacuna Expanse. Sorta like Sim City meets Farmville meets Master of Orion. Free to play, and you play it outside of Facebook (although you can login with your FB ID, and have it send updates. I have chosen not to do that.). It's in the first month of availability, and it's a big universe out there, so you won't get overwhelmed.

If you feel you might want to play, use this link: https://us1.lacunaexpanse.com/#referral=b41e006f-f987-3895-b1c9-7496b2c8880e - it gives me in-game stuff, and free stuff is a good thing.

There's also a native (and free) iPhone client *and* it's all done in Perl with the APIs made available, in case you want to create your own interface. What more can you ask for?

01:27 pm: My new addiction
So, I've just started playing Lacuna Expanse - a planetary building and space exploration game.

Apparently it's similar to Master of Orion - although I never played it. I think of it as being akin to Planets, back in my old UCSC days. It starts out very time consuming, goes through a phase where it's less so, and then probably picks up again later, as you create more colonies.

There are probably similarities to Farmville-like games, but with the bonus of not being related to Zynga, and therefore, you know, evil. It's also not part of Facebook, although you can use that to login.

If you're interested in playing, I can get you an invite code, which may help me out a bit. Let me know.

04:59 pm: Dear Giants
If you don't make the playoffs this year, it's your own damn fault, and you deserve not to.

Signed,

Someone who has your pitching staff in his Fantasy Baseball game.


(Yeah, it's a football helmet icon. But the name of all my fantasy sports teams is "I Hate This Game", and thus it represents all of them. And now you know the rest of the story.)

05:55 am: I lack the skills for this...
Anyone want to create an image of the SF Bay (looking out past the GG Bridge) with the caption "CaliFiorina Dreaming"?

I'm not sure how to tastefully imagefy her anti-choice views, nor her economic policies, but her being in favor of oil drilling should be easy enough to put into a single, bloggable, meme-able image.

11:45 am: Evil Facebook pondering
So, the "Add a Dislike button" turned out to be a scam. Surprise, surprise, but it got a lot of people. Obviously there are a lot of people, who might otherwise be careful, who were willing to take the risk of being phished or infected in case it was true. (The link in question eventually connected folks to an existing Firefox add-on that *does* give you a dislike button. But it's not part *of* Facebook.)

What *other* sorts of things could you use to get people to click your phishing link? I mean, sure, you could promise porn, but people are sorta expecting that. Similarly, funny animal pictures probably won't cut it either.

Here's a few that popped into my head:
1) Cheat at Spider Solitaire. New add-on lets you take back as many moves as you like, and lets you see hidden cards.
2) Newly released $ACTOR/SINGER rehearsal tapes. (I would go with Michael Jackson here, actually.)
3) Outtakes from $MOVIE. Choose a current movie, maybe add "Long lost" to that, and use something like "Gone With the Wind".
4) Bootleg performce - $MUSICIAN in concert. This could work well with artists that don't tour very much. If I were a target demographic kinda guy, I would use Tom Waits here.

What would tempt you? Or what do you think would tempt others? (And remember - this isn't about wording, but about content.)

05:08 pm: Just wondering...

Nothing deep, I know. But just wondering.

04:29 am: Shiny!
A musical interlude in 4 parts...

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( And now for something completely differentCollapse )

02:21 am: At Friday Night Waltz, Richard Powers played the Bohemian National Waltz. The same steps as Bohemian National Polka, but with the music modified into waltz time.

Still pictures wouldn't do it justice, so I got a video of it instead:

04:18 pm: Song Lyrics Quiz meme
As seen on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/note.php?saved&&suggest¬e_id=452182200529#!/note.php?note_id=452182200529)

I'm bored, so I may as well do this: Set your music player of choice to random, post the 1st line (or so) of N songs (that have lyrics), see who can guess them. As is to be expected, using Google or some other search engine is cheating.

1) "I seen a girl on a one-way corridor, stealing down a wrong-way street" - Skateaway - Dire Straits
2) "When you hear the sound a-comin, hear the drummers drummin'" Come Together - The Who
3) "I had not taken acid for 12 years"
4) "Red high heels is the way I feel" - Red High Heels - Jane Siberry
5) "Romeo was restless, he was ready to kill" - Mystery Dance - Elvis Costello
6) "Happy birthday Elvis, you're not really dead"
7) "It's astounding" - The Time Warp - Rocky Horror Picture Show
8) "I've tried to mend the love that ended long ago, although we still pretend"
9) "Will you take me across the channel"
10) "Ooh, you're making me live" You're My Best Friend - Queen
11) "When your heart's in someone else's hands" - Cowboys and Angels - George Michael
12) "Please allow me to introduce myself" - Sympathy for the Devil - The Rolling Stones
13) "Take all your overgrown infants away, somewhere" - The Fletcher Memorial Home - Pink Floyd
14) "I see you in the morning, you're my color of the rising sky"
15) "Jenny came over and told me 'bout Freddy" - I Kissed a Girl - Jill Sobule
16) "Oh Black Betty bam-a-lam" - Black Betty - Ram Jam
17) "Thanks for the times that you've given me" - Three Times a Lady - The Commodores
18) "Well I remember every little thing as if it happened only yesterday" - Paradise by the Dashboard Light - Meatloaf
19) "I believe right now if I could I would swallow you whole" - Undertow, Suzanne Vega
20) "Says Red Molly to James" - 1952 Vincent Black Lightning - Richard Thompson
21) "I have heard, among this clan, you are called the forgotten man" - Well Did You Evah? - covered by Lee Press-On and the Nails
22) "Rock on gold dust woman" - Gold Dust Woman - Fleetwood Mac
23) "I've got a word or two to say about the things you do"
24) "It's four in the morning, the end of December" - Famous Blue Raincoat - covered by Jonathan Coulton
25) "It happened one summer" - Suddenly Last Summer - The Motels

Some of these are easier than others...

(I've also folded in the responses from folks on Facebook.)

#3 - The Acid Song - Loudon Wainwright III
#6 - Happy Birthday Elvis - Loudon Wainwright III (Same album, even. Randomness at work.)
#8 - Trilogy - Emerson, Lake and Palmer
#9 - Strange Weather - Tom Waits
#14 - Sara's Song - G. Love and Special Sauce (I never would have gotten this one)
#23 - Think For Yourself - covered by the Yonder Mountain String Band, but the original is by The Beatles


I'm not especially surprised that 8 and 14 are among the unguessed ones. 9 is a tiny bit surprising, and there are folks I expected to easily get #3 at least. Ah well.

Thanks all for playing.

04:55 pm: What the Tea Party folks *should* be saying...
(Originally posted as a comment elsewhere...)

The Tea Party folks should be saying "Yes, there are racists in our group. There are also racists in the Republican party, and probably also in the Democratic party. Racism respects no boundaries. We do not support it, but since we are a movement and not a political party, there's not a lot we can do about it. You can choose your friends, but you can't choose who agrees with you. That's the price you pay for living in a democracy."

Acknowledge, shift blame and move on. It seems so reasonable.

07:48 pm: In case you were wondering...
Mattel is evil. (kid_lit_fan, I doubt this is news to you.)

Well, having just finished Toy Monster by Jerry Oppenheimer, he certainly makes a good case for that belief. It's a history of the company from the viewpoint of the people who ran the place (or were hugely influential in its running), and, well, wow. From "the father of Barbie" who was a womanizing swinger (married at one time to Zsa Zsa Gabor), to Jill Barad, who proved female executives could be as brilliant, ambitious, petty and paranoid as male executives to the current exec whose basic belief is "we have lawyers for that, and anyway, I've got a huge (executive) package", it's interesting reading.

They really don't care about you, or your kids, or their employees. They care about themselves in a way that's more commonly associated with such noble corporations as BP or Haliburton.

Online reviews are always interesting to read - I found it amusing to see the same (negative) review cut and pasted on Amazon and GoodReads. Anyway, some folks have issue with the style and the journalism; I had no problem with the prose, and even if it's not 100% accurate as claimed, I suspect there's more truth in there than falsehood.

Tags: bookspotting

01:31 am: Quickie book review
To Ms. seanan_mcguire: Holy shit.

To everyone else: Buy a copy of Feed written under the pseudonym Mira Grant. Then read it. *Especially* if the idea of a political thriller in a world that exists with zombies appeals to you.

05:45 pm: A "casual" question for those that think about such things...
This question is obliquely inspired by an imaginary conversation with someone I don't know, but have only seen...

"Is the issue you have with 'gender' the fact that it's a dichotomy, or that it exists at all?"

There's one person in particular I'm thinking of for this question, but I know a bunch of folks out there are also likely to have thoughts on this. Comments screened unless you say otherwise.

Making this open to the general public in case you want to throw people here. I'm just posting this to get rid of a brainworm.

02:51 pm: These questions just come to me sometimes...


If you want to elaborate on your criteria, feel free.

01:30 am: Two religious questions
Question 1: Given Calvinist theories on predestination (Summary: "You're either of the elect or you're not."), what prompted them to live a path of denial and basically no fun? Is it just a modern-day way of thinking to say "Well, if I'm of the elect, then it doesn't matter what bad I do, and if I'm not of the elect, it doesn't matter what good I do, so let's just go out and party!" I'm reading The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell, and it's basically about the Puritans, and how they thought about things, making use of their writings.

Question 2: Is it reasonable to say that the Universalist Unitarian and Ba'hai religions are essentially the same thing, just coming out of a different background? UU developed out of a Christian theology, and Ba'hai out of an Islamic one. But the core teachings seem very similar. I welcome comparisons and contrasts.

I'm opening this question up to the real world, so if you want to find someone who wouldn't ordinarily read this, feel free to point them my way...

08:03 pm: Gigging Tips for Non-Actors (revised and extended)
Rev 2, incorporating stuff from suggestions and comments people have made. This version is the same one as on Facebook.

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And, of course, I'm still open for comments, critique and corrections.

07:40 pm: Because you know you'll need it someday...
The complete list of "Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?" responses.

10:40 pm: A different kind of book meme
Via kid_lit_fan via ophymirage...

List ten books you own, that you haven't given the attention they deserve. (Note: this doesn't include books you love so much that not reading them once/month is considered insufficient attention.)

Sadly, this is probably a very easy list to make:

1) The Seuss, The Whole Seuss and Nothing but the Seuss by Charles Cohen. Yes, it's a biography of Dr. Seuss - one that I haven't actually read yet. But I'm ready to. More or less.

2) Little Nemo 1905-1914 by Winsor McKay. A collection of all the Sunday strips, when you could put a full story on a single page. Neil Gaiman inspired this purchase, but I haven't gotten around to reading it. It's just completely out of a different time, and can be hard to get into.

3) Head First Java by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates. I tried using it, but the approach the book takes was not inspiring me. Or perhaps I was attempting to jump ahead too quickly. Some people respond well to the approach, which is more than just the usual textbook style. I may give it another try sometime.

4) Juggling for the Complete Klutz by John Cassidy and B.C. Rimbeaux. Someday, really.

5) The Holy Bible - King James Version. In general I don't think it's a bad idea to have a copy just as reference. In practice, I've never felt the need to reference it.

6) Any number of fairy and folk tale collections put out by Pantheon Books. English, Russian, Yiddish, Grimms, General and American Indian - at least. From my folk tale period of life.

7) Life in Pictures by Will Eisner. I'm about halfway through it, but have not managed to finish it, which is surprising and tragic, as Eisner's a brilliant storyteller, and a magnificently evocative artist. But it's on the bookshelf, waiting.

8) Bill Sienkiewicz Sketchbook by Bill Sienkiewicz - evidence of neglect is that it appears to be ruined by either water or cat. It's a shame he doesn't seem to be active in the comic world anymore - although I'm not sure I'd know if he was. A quick check of his website (http://www.billsienkiewiczart.com/index.asp) seems to show that he's making plenty of money without being involved in the comics industry. Good for him.

9) Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook by Georgeanne Brennan. Leading the list of cookbooks that sit on my kitchen area bookshelf, along with a number of medieval and renaissance cookbooks.

10) Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. I'd like to work through this book again...if only I could find it. I know I still have a copy somewhere...

05:40 pm: No particular reason...just bored and curious

05:00 pm: Recently read
I am so far behind in my Bookspottings so as almost to be said to have given it up, however, dear companions, I do continue to read assiduously, and feel compelled to write now, having just finished the remarkable and delightful Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.

I heartily recommend it to anyone out there who cares to read. Such an amusing and heart-felt tale of manners and violence has never before been written, but will hopefully be done so again. I do hold out high hopes for this Autumn's release of Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters as well.

08:44 pm: Plans? Well, a plan anyway...
Not sure about Friday or Saturday night, but Saturday day is Junkstock at Golden Gate Park, Marx Meadow (which is across the road from where Fog Faire has been, and where the Rooster Stage is at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, as I recall).

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If there's something I should be aware of, or something I've committed to, feel free to let me know.