Links

Via zanzjan, the stats behind redshirt deaths on Star Trek. The chart is excellent.

I was amused by this article on whether listening to audiobooks instead of reading is cheating. I prefer to read them, but if I listen on tape it goes on my books read list, and even though I mark them as audio, I don’t consider it cheating (at least the unabridged versions).

Life

Busy weekend: Irish festival, Simpsons movie, dinner at the Turkish restaurant.

The festival was fun, and much bigger than I’d expected. We saw a couple different bands — though considering how long we were there, it seems like we should have seen a lot more, missed all the dancing, and participated in the attempt to reclaim the world record for largest number of people doing an Irish jig at one time.

The stickers they handed out to help count people say “Guinness World’s Record Largest Irish Jig Attempt,” which sounds more like it’s for the largest number of people trying to jig. Which is pretty appropriate.

They had music workshops, but I didn’t go — wouldn’t have wanted to drag my flute around. I suppose I could have brought my whistle. One booth had really nice whistles for sale, but I refused to be tempted. (If I took up playing again, I’d get a low whistle, because the regular D whistle is too shrill. Assuming the low whistle didn’t hurt my hands like the flute does.)

The movie was better than I’d expected, especially given that I stopped watching the show years ago because it wasn’t funny anymore.

Dinner (stuffed eggplant) was great, but I’d expected that.

Either download the new version, or make this simple change:

On line 346 (that’s near the bottom), there is a line
htmlspecialchars($item->link[1]['href'])

Delete the “[1]” and the plugin should be fixed.

Updated my exceedingly boring nonfiction site with some of the FrameMaker stuff I was playing around with recently. I have a bunch of links (to old clips) I need to add to that site someday soon; since my articles are all on other sites, that's tricky, since they could disappear at any time.

Shameless plug: If you click on this link to the html version of the FrameMaker tables article that I sold to AC, they will pay me an additional $0.0015. (So no, I won't notice if you look or not!)

Writing Summary:

Took the week off due to sickness. I did get some reviews done early in the week, at least.

Goals for the coming week:
Two reviews – one on the OWW, one off.
Revise ATfD.

Tasks for whenever:
(OWW) Catch up on reviews to be returned.
(Trapped Magic) Finish unstickynoting ch 11-15, Finish ch 1-3, Type ch 4-10, Notebook notes for ch 11-15.

•Links to various free SF sites

Shameless self-promotion:

•How to format a manuscript for an online critique group.

Writing Summary:

Goals for the week:
Finish unstickynoting ch 11-15 - maybe half?
Go over the notebook notes for ch 4-10
Go over crits for ch 1-3 – half done, but haven’t started any edits yet.
Do some reviews (have at least 2 to return) – Did 1.

That list appears deceptively short, looking back on it. Spent a lot of time on two notes: “Does this do enough to show why Jessa cares?” and “Does it make the reader care?” Both required planting things all the way back to ch 2. With luck the answer to both is now Yes.

This week:
Finish unstickynoting ch 11-15
Finish ch 1-3
Type ch 4-10
Notebook notes for ch 11-15

The notes for 11-15 aren’t so bad; I’ve already dealt with most of them. (Maybe I can get a head start on ch 17, which has a two page essay on “something’s wrong and i don’t know what”….)

• (Humor) Helpful advice in the event of terrorist attacks. I like the one with the blaring radio.

• Via anghara, daily diversions for writers (comics)

• How to Move Posts from LiveJournal to WordPress is my first article for Associated Content. (Paid more than the cup of coffee I’d expected.) I really should finish backing up my old LJ posts someday.

Writing Summary:

Last week’s goal:
Revise more: through ch 10 (except for dealing with the scene that might need cut).

What I did:
• Dealt with the scene that needed cut. Had to move four bits of description elsewhere — I tend towards sparseness so can’t afford to lose any. Two bits went to a scene where I’d cut some boring bits, and the other two went to a scene that had previously been set in a place I’d been setting far too many scenes. Hopefully it is now more interesting.
• Unstickynoted [1] ch 4-10
• Dealt with some notebook notes for ch 4-10
• Started unstickynoting ch 11-15

[1] unstickynote - Look at each page of the manuscript and make all corrections marked with sticky notes. Generally these are smaller (or at least scene-specific) things. Larger concerns are scribbled in a notebook.

This week:
Finish unstickynoting ch 11-15
Go over the notebook notes for ch 4-10
Go over crits for ch 1-3
Do some reviews (have at least 2 to return)

Unstickynoting is easier than dealing with the notebook notes, which is why I put those off last week.

I’m not going to finish this before March like I wanted, probably, but I’ll see how close I can get.

On the one hand I feel like I’m wasting my time (first novel, why bother fixing it again, better to write a new one). On the other hand, I think I’m getting a good return on my time as far as quality goes.

• Tobias Buckell tells how he got his freelance career started.

• Dvorak update: I know all my letters and lots of punctuation. Friday afternoon I made the switch entirely. I type verrrry slowly now; it’s annoying, but I had to switch bc my fingers were getting confused. And it’d be good to stop hitting ctrl-q when I mean ctrl-x. At least OpenOffice asks me to confirm that I want to quit.

Goals for the week:

Revise a lot.
Try to get Chs 1-3 ready for critique.
Do two critiques.

Writing Summary:
I’ve been revising. Not much interesting to say. Chapters 1-3 are up for review on the OWW. I’ve also handled random sticky notes throughout the book.

This week:
Revise more: through ch 10 (except for dealing with the scene that might need cut). That’ll give me a week to do the next 10 chapters and a few days for other stuff (like crits)

EDIT: Sorry, this turned pay-to-read between the time I read it and the time I posted it. A quick summary – most papers aren’t worth the money.

• Via sartorias, I’ve been listening to Pandora Internet Radio, which I first heard about when I was still on dial-up. I’m sure Columbus has a decent radio station or two, but I haven’t found one yet.

•NYTimes Asst. Mangaging Ed. Richard Berke answers reader questions in the Talk to the Newsroom column.

My faves:

Q. Why do stories written by reporters need editing? … A. Many reporters here would say, Amen!…

Q. Can you please tell me how to search for articles in the papers when it [is] sent to you like this? All morning I’ve been trying to locate the articles from the Post still nothing happen. This is a part of [an] assignment. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/10/AR2006091001158.html –Sharon Holquin A. I’m all for helping students with their homework. But here’s a lesson for you: Don’t ask an editor from The New York Times to lend a hand so you can access the Washington Post Web site. I’m not asking that you only read the Times. By all means, read as much as you can. But since you’re already here, why not take a look at a few of our articles? I mean, you’re already on our site and everything.

•“Rewriting the Rules of Fiction” – Wall Street Journal article on fan fiction. (Haven’t had time to actually read this yet.)

Members of rec.arts.sf.composition have dedicated an auditorium chair at the Minneapolis Central Library to Patricia C. Wrede, who’s provided us with an incredible amount of advice over the years.

Pat’s post is here. Beth Friedman managed to surprise her with the news, and tells the story here. With photos. Thanks to mjlayman for coming up with and organizing the whole project.

What he has found is that genius – whether in art or architecture or even business – is not the sole province of 17-year-old Picassos and 22-year-old Andreessens. Instead, it comes in two very different forms, embodied by two very different types of people. “Conceptual innovators,” as Galenson calls them, make bold, dramatic leaps in their disciplines. They do their breakthrough work when they are young. Think Edvard Munch, Herman Melville, and Orson Welles. They make the rest of us feel like also-rans. Then there’s a second character type, someone who’s just as significant but trudging by comparison. Galenson calls this group “experimental innovators.” Geniuses like Auguste Rodin, Mark Twain, and Alfred Hitchcock proceed by a lifetime of trial and error and thus do their important work much later in their careers. Galenson maintains that this duality – conceptualists are from Mars, experimentalists are from Venus – is the core of the creative process. And it applies to virtually every field of intellectual endeavor, from painters and poets to economists.

There are some problems with his dichotomy, of course (some of the early-bloomers died early being one of the biggest), but the article does a good job of pointing them out. I would have liked to see a clearer link between the *type* of innovaters – conceptual vs experimental – and the age at which they innovate. Most of the examples are from art history, which I’m unfamiliar with, so I can’t judge the accuracy of breakthroughs in concept versus more gradual ideas.

Anyone know of any materials science blogs?

The average half-life of a news item is just 36 hours, or one and a half days after it is released. While this is short, it is longer than predicted by simple exponential models, which assume that web page browsing is less random than it actually is.

The short life of a news item — combined with random visiting patterns of readers — implies that people could miss a significant fraction of news by not visiting the portal when a new document is first displayed, which is why publishers like to provide e-mail news alerts.

One could argue that if users aren’t hunting for the news they’re missing, they don’t want to know about it anyway. With the proliferation of news sources on the internet, it’s almost harder to not know something.

rilina