Month: October 2006

Its a long way to November

I really need to figure out how to motivate myself to write outside of November. This morning, I’m home alone because the wife has to meet with her boss and get some stuff done at the office. Since it’s Sunday, and there’s no football on yet, I’ve been struggling to amuse myself. I’ve been using PBWiki to see if it’s a good way to plan out the novel, and so far it seems to be working. I just had a mini-epiphany this morning on the plot of this year’s novel, which is always fun.

It makes me wonder why I can’t get myself to do much writing outside of the confines of Novel Writing Month. I like writing. I like that feeling when the solution to your sticky plot point just comes to you. And, according to some (biased, I know) people, I’m not a bad writer.

It’s just frustrating that, since November 2002, my first Novel Writing Month, I’ve written over 150,000 words of fiction in four Novembers (And one, 2004, I only wrote 400, so really in three Novembers), and probably 30,000 words in the other thirty-two months.  That’s not very good.

I think part of me is convinced that one day something will just click and I’ll just “be a writer”.  But the more sensible part of me knows that it’s not that easy.

But, Nano 2006 seems to be coming together nicely, so I’m going to keep working on it and enjoy the month of November.  And then on December 1st, I can see where I am.  Either I can go back to working on 2003’s Love in Black and White, or I can continue with this year’s still untitled novel.  I expect all of you to yell at me if I don’t.

How am I going to explain this to my daughter?

Boing Boing: Fake beauty, video about transhuman tricks used on models

That is, when I have a daughter.  But the likelihood of me having a daughter is pretty good.  I mean, the first kid has about a 50/50 chance of being a girl, right?  So if I plan to have multiple children, which the wife currently is on board with, I have a better than 50/50 chance of having a girl.

Anyway, the point is, how would you explain this to a little girl?  The video shows an attractive but perfectly normal woman, and the process to make her face into a billboard.  Makeup, which isn’t surprising, but then the digital manipulation of her face is a little shocking.  They make her neck thinner and longer, raise her eyebrows, make her lips fuller.

I can’t imagine explaining that to my (As yet unborn, or even conceived) little girl when she’s six and asks me why.  There’s a long time in a kid’s life when they understand enough to ask hard-to-answer questions, but they may not understand enough to hear the real answer.  Assuming there is one.  I mean, I don’t know why we’ve built up completely unreasonable expectations of beauty.

I’ve heard the arguments that some of it is based on propagation of the species, and the claim that a fit woman with wide hips is well-suited for reproduction.  But what do full lips and a long, slender neck have to do with reprodcution?

Absolutely nothing, that’s what.

Its interesting to live near D.C.

Wild Blue Wonder – washingtonpost.com

The wife and I were driving from her office in the city to Arlington to take my grandmother on some errands when we passed this new monument, and what looked like a circus or something or other happening at the Pentagon. I didn’t know anything about it, but apparently she had heard something about a new monument. So we surmised that this was the dedication ceremony. I have to say that, from 395, the monument is kind of dumb. I mean, it’s big and shiny and sharp, and I guess it probably strikes fear in the hearts of terrorists or something. But it’s sort of ugly.

But, whatever. Art is subjective, and I’m picky about my art. I’m happy to honor the Air Force, as they’ve done a great deal to protect my way of life.

Anyway, my real point was that part of the ceremony is an air show. As I was turning off of Spout Run Parkway, we heard a loud plane overhead that turned out to be one of these.USAF B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber Plainly visible, right overhead through my open sunroof on this sunny and brisk day, a friggin’ stealth bomber. I’m not usually one to get all worked up over something like this, but these things cost $2.2 BILLION each. And, it’s a stealth bomber. That’s pretty awesome. We saw a few other planes (And heard even more), some that I recognize from video games and whatnot. But the stealth was the highlight.

Anyway, I hope that hotlinking to airforce-technology.com isn’t going to cause any problems. At least they aren’t likely to goatse (Link to worksafe explanation, for those who don’t know) me.

Edit: Didn’t realize that the image was too big for IE, since I avoid using IE as much as possible. So I made it smaller.

You cant just say your domain name

Utube.com deluged with YouTube seekers | CNET News.com

How many times have you heard a radio commercial that directs people to a website?  And how many of those times has the actual site been something different than what you heard?  English is a funny language – we have these things called homophones, and they can make it difficult.  Sometimes you can figure it out from the context (Assuming you know how to spell), but I’ve heard commercials, although of course I can’t think of an example, where it’s impossible.

Part of this is due to the fact that sometimes the company name isn’t a real word.  If you’ve invented the spelling of the company name, I’m not necessarily going to be able to spell it if you say it.

I suppose it’s not that big a deal.  It’s just dumb.

New drink burns calories

Accidental Hedonist – Coke’s Caloric Sophistry

There are a couple things wrong with this.  First, they say that drinking three twelve ounce cans will burn about 100 calories.  Okay, fine.  How many calories are in a can?  There’s about 140 calories in a 12 ounce can of Coke.  Unless each can of this new stuff is less than 35 calories or so (Highly unlikely, but I can’t find the number online), even if the calorie-burning claims are correct, you’re still taking in more than you’re burning.

Second, you’d burn about 35 calories taking a slow walk for ten minutes.  35 calories is not that much.

Third, “The makers claim that a combination of extracts from green tea and caffeine speeds up the drinker’s metabolic rate, which helps the body to burn calories”.  How many can I drink in a day before my metabolic rate is at an unsafe level?  Artificially speeding up your metabloic rate just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me.

Fourth, “But, this is a positive step that people can take to make a difference to their health with regular physical activity and a balanced, healthy diet.”  So says Rhoma Applebaum, chief scientist for Coke.  Everything I’m reading from Coke implies that this is a health drink.  That is, something that will help you be healthy.  Is it healthy like Diet Coke is healthy?  I mean, sure, drinking it is probably healthier than drinking straight high-fructose corn syrup, or drinking battery acid.  But I doubt drinking one of these Envigas is healthier than drinking nothing.

Anyway, I love Coke.  Not the company, but the soda.  I know it’s bad for me, and that’s why I try not to drink it too often (Although I should drink less of it).  But this stuff is being marketed deceptively, and I’d like to see Coke get sued for it.

Winter is here

Yesterday morning, it was 65 degrees (18 C for those of you who use that ridiculous system.  Freezing is zero degrees?  Crazy!) out when I went to work.  Today, it was 34 (1 C).

Now, I like the cold.  But those first few days of cold are always a bit of a shock.  All the windows in the house were still open this morning, so it was a bit chilly inside.  And our flag football game tomorrow is at 8AM, so that will probably be cold.

Of course, it’s still hot in my office, as usual.

Anyway, that’s probably all I have to say about the weather.

Listening to NPR makes me cry

Charlie’s Diary: Playing the Genocide Card

The Lancet isn’t just any medical journal, it’s one of the big three that you used to — and probably still do — find in common rooms in hospitals all over the UK (along with the British Medical Journal and sometimes the New England Journal of Medicine). It is not noted for publishing random speculation, agitprop, and crank letters — it’s the top journal of record in its field. Getting an article into The Lancet is like getting one in Nature, or Science: it’s a big one.

This morning, for example, I heard President Bush and one of his big shot generals dismissing this report because they’ve never heard a number bigger than about 50,000, so this 650,000 estimate MUST be wrong.

Now, before you go doubting my source, I know Charles Stross is an author, not an expert in military excursions or whatever.  But we are bringing the qualifications of The Lancet into question here, not Stross.  The Lancet was founded in 1823.  When a scientific journal is that old, one guesses that it has not made a habit of inventing numbers more than 10 times the number we’d heard previously just for kicks.

So, NPR followed that with a little bit telling how Bush has made absolutely sure that we associate North Korea with terrorism.  The only thing North Korea has in common with Al Qaeda is that they have been making a nuisance of themselves (And by “making a nusiance” I of course mean “testing nuclear weapons”) at the same time as we are fighting a war that we like to think has something to do with Al Qaeda.

I suppose it is fair to lump North Korea in there with Iraq, though.  There’s probably just as much chance of finding Bin Laden in North Korea as finding him in Iraq.

I was a Republican during the Clinton administration.  By the end of this administration, I expect to be huddled on the floor in a corner, rocking back and forth and mumbling something about “the days of yore”.

Space Invaders is awesome

Teenager moves video icons just by imagination Via Futurismic

The teenager, a patient at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, had a grid atop his brain to record brain surface signals, a brain-machine interface technique that uses electrocorticographic (ECoG) activity – data taken invasively right from the brain surface. It is an alternative to a frequently used technique to study humans called electroencephalographic activity (EEG) – data taken non-invasively by electrodes outside the brain on the scalp. Engineers programmed the Atari software to interface with the brain-machine interface system.

So this kid is not only helping us learn how we might deal with epilepsy, but can also play Space Invaders without a controller.  That’s just one step closer to the end of computer input devices as we know them.  Wouldn’t it be cool if your interaction with the computer wasn’t limited by the speed at which you can communicate with it?

More on Googles purchase of YouTube

The Jeff Pulver Blog: Some thoughts on the Google Purchase of YouTube:

Some interesting speculation here.  Jeff Pulver thinks (hopes?) that this could mean a real step forward towards internet TV.  The combination of YouTube’s community with Google’s developers and resources could be the start of a real alternative to cable/satellite TV.

That could be really cool.  An entirely new model for distributing mainstream video entertainment.  Maybe we’d finally stop being stuck with this antiquated “this show is on at this time” system.  You’d think that the popularity of Tivo and DVR would suggest that maybe people don’t like being forced to watch a show at a specific time, but the networks don’t seem to want to deliver what people want.

Oh, you mean this wasnt just an unsubstantiated rumor?

Google to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion – Yahoo! News Link via Gizmodo

Hmm. I’m not sure what Google’s intention is here. For a while, I trusted their judgement and figured they knew what they were doing. But their sea of perpetual betas is starting to get old. Yes, I love Gmail. Yes, I love Google maps. Yes, I use writely and calendar and spreadsheets and translate. But they have a million more things that are in a constant state of upheaval. I guess it’s good that YouTube is pretty stable.

I wonder if they’re going to make a lot of changes. Google is much more of a target for the lawsuits that YouTube has been getting over the copyrighted content that people put up. And Google has been much more willing to remove things under pressure from copyright holders (Probably why no one I know uses Google video). YouTube has never really made any money, so I think people hesitated to sue them. Google, on the other hand, has gobs of money. Will Comedy Central stop thinking it’s cute that you can find about a million Daily Show clips on YouTube now that YouTube is Google?

You know what I’d like to see come out of this?  A standardized video format.  Something I can view embedded in a browser, or streaming, or on my desktop, or wherever, nicely compressed, in stereo, and all that.  I don’t want Real Player and QuickTime and WMV and Divx and whatever the heck else you need to watch video.  I want one little app that plays one little open source format that EVERYONE uses.  Can you do that, YouTube and Google?  Please?