Tag: Anti complaint

I CAN PREDICT THE FUTURE!

Just announced today, Flickr now does video. I don’t really care at the moment, because I don’t ever make videos of anything (Maybe that will change when the baby comes, but I doubt it). But just yesterday I was writing in my novel-in-progress, which takes place in the not terribly distant future, about Flickr and video. I had been thinking about what Flickr (Or whatever takes its place) might be like in, say, 30 years. Once you start thinking about that, you have to go back and try and define what Flickr is now. On the surface, it’s a photo sharing site with a community surrounding it. But the ways people use it mean that it really goes well beyond just sharing photos. Some people use it as a cheap and reliable image hosting service for their blog. Some people use it to track changes over time in something. You see this a lot with babies and pregnancy. Some people use it almost instead of a blog or public journal – “See what I did yesterday, here’s a picture”. The Library of Congress is using it to crowdsource the categorization of their photo library. Barack Obama is using it to connect with supporters and advertise himself. So I was thinking, as technology advances, will we still take photos? In thirty years, you could be wearing contact lenses that can record hours of HD video. Maybe you’ll even have a hard drive installed in your head that can store video recorded by your eyes. Do we only take lots of photos now because that’s the convenient technology? There may always be a demand for still images as art, but we may get away from using them to say, “Hey, look at my cat!”. Or maybe not. Anyway, just thought it was cool that Flickr is doing what I thought they’d do, thirty years early.

Officially on vacation

This is posted in category “work”, but it really should be posted in “the utter lack of anything resembling work”, because I am totally free this week. Friday was my last day at my old job, and I don’t start the new one until a week from today. So here I am, wide awake at 7:53AM. Some vacation, you say. Well, it is. I’m up now by choice. First, I rarely sleep in anymore, so if I lay in bed until what most would consider a reasonable hour, it would throw off my whole day. Second, I have things to do. I have a novel burning a hole in my head that needs to come out. I’ve planned this one more than anything else I’ve ever written (Although still way less than anyone who writes for a living would have), and I want to get started. Novel Writing Month isn’t getting me any closer to having a novel fit for sending off in search of a publisher, so I’m trying a different technique. So I’m going to start writing as soon as wife gets off to work and out of my hair. Then, later, I have to take the cat to the vet. Then we’re going to check out some day care centers this afternoon, and we have tickets to the Nationals game tonight (Assuming it’s actually done raining). Anyway, big day. And I see my coffee is finished brewing, and the wife is heading out the door, so I’m going to get started on my vacation. Sorry to all of you who have to work today.

Orioles win again, and the hold is even stupider than the save

Holy cow, the Orioles won again! That puts them at 4-1, in first place. I know it doesn’t mean much at this point, but I bet that most analysts wouldn’t have expected them to be three games over .500 at any point in the season, so this is encouraging. And they did this one with a two out, ninth inning rally to turn a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 win. Here’s where the stats get ridiculous. ESPN reports a stat called a hold. It’s basically given to a pitcher who enters the game in a save situation and leaves without relinquishing the lead. It’s utterly absurd, and this game is a perfect example. Eric O’Flaherty entered the game to pitch for the Mariners in the bottom of the ninth, when they led, 2-0. He allows a double to the first batter, who then advanced to third on a groundout and scores on another groundout. A single then ends O’Flaherty’s night. He gets a hold because it was a save situation, and he left with his team still winning, 2-1. Mark Lowe comes in and gives up a single and a walk to load the bases. A wild pitch and a single later, and the game is over, a 3-2 Orioles win. O’Flaherty is charged with 2 runs in 2/3 of an inning, but because the tying run didn’t score until he left the game, even though it was charged to him, he gets the hold. Lowe gets the loss because it was his baserunner who eventually scored the winning run. Too bad for Mariners’ starter Felix Hernandez, who pitched a fantastic eight innings of shutout ball. He, of course, gets nothing for his trouble.

Hey, look, this isn’t about baseball

Neil Gaiman – my life in green and purple

Because it seems to me that giving away an e-Book with a hardback is an excellent way to grow the e-book world, and something that a publisher could do at little or no cost.

The Orioles won last night, BTW. Anyway, this seems like a pretty awesome idea. A new guy at Harper Collins is considering giving away a free e-book and audiobook copy of a book which you have just purchased. As Neil says, “of course buying the book would give you the audio and the text, not just the object”. This is something of a radical idea compared to what most people are used to, but it could really grow the market for non-paper books. Growing the market for non-paper books is a good thing for authors and publishers (And the manufacturers of e-book readers and MP3 players and a whole mess of other industries who might be prescient enough to hop on the bandwagon) and, most certainly, book readers (or listeners). As I’ve mentioned (And as Techdirt has mentioned roughly 8 billion times), the marginal cost of producing another copy of an e-book or audiobook in digital format is nothing. Therefore, the cost of these goods should go to zero, as well. This makes them terrible things to try to sell, but wonderful things to use as promotional goods or just as “Hey, we (unlike you, recording industry) really do like our customers” rewards. I have some ulterior motives here – I’m hoping that the e-book market grows until someone puts out a cool e-book reader for a reasonable cost. I currently have 26 free and legal e-books saved on my computer. I’ve only read one of them, because reading a book on a computer screen really sucks. But I’d like to read the rest of them.

I complained too soon

Box Score The Orioles came back to win last night! Despite Cabrera allowing two runs and then leaving the bases loaded with no outs in the fifth, my new hero Randor Bierd got them out of the jam. He allowed an inherited runner to score on a double play ball, and then got out of the inning. Then Aubrey Huff came through with a home run in the sixth and a go-ahead two run double in the bottom of the eighth for a 9-6 Orioles win! Wow! I might have watched the game, but the Celtics were on TV (Winning their 60th game), and I wouldn’t think of denying the wife her Celtics. Meanwhile, if the season were only two games long, I would be totally wrong on Brian Roberts having an off year. You can’t ask for much more than a .600 batting average and 1.950 OPS (I know, small sample size, I don’t care). Anyway, nice to see the Orioles get a win. In other baseball news, if you read Fire Joe Morgan, you have probably heard their views on David Eckstein. If you don’t, you can read them here. I hope to see an article from them today about how Eckstein managed to score using nothing but grittiness and his monstrous, monstrous heart. Eckstein has nine at bats this season. In eight of them, using his bat, he has managed to get zero hits, one strikeout, and hit into two double plays. But in his first at bat last night, he used his “intangibles” and made Jason Giambi commit an error, allowing Eckstein to reach first base! I didn’t watch the game, and the ESPN box score doesn’t specify, but I suspect that Giambi was mesmerized by the dirt on Eckstein’s uniform, despite the fact that he was the first batter of the game. He was so mesmerized that, when Eck weakly hit the ball towards him, Giambi just didn’t pick it up. Now safely on first, Eck really began to shine. It doesn’t show up in any “numbers” or “sabermetrics”, but it was really Eckstein’s heart that allowed him to advance to second base on Shannon Stewart’s single, and his keen baseball sense that sent him around to score on Alex Rios’ single. The other two batters had little to do with it. Edited to add: They posted about Eck, but not about his gritty grittiness grittying a run.

Dinner and Drinks with Charlie Stross

Charles Stross @ BrickskellerI got to meet Charles Stross! And drink good beer! I dragged the wife down to The Brickskeller last night to meet the author and his wife, and an eclectic group of local fans. It was a little tough for the wife, since they now have a bunch of Bell’s Beer on hand. But it was less tough than it could have been, because they were out of most of it, including the Hopslam they claimed to have on tap. But it was fun. He signed my copy of Halting State. I wasn’t sure which book to bring. I could have done what one person did, and brought everything Charlie had ever published. But really, the marginal utility of each subsequent signature is pretty insignificant. I thought about bringing Singularity Sky, which I really enjoyed. Or Accelerando, the first of his that I read. But I have both of those in paperback. And my favorite of his, Iron Sunrise, I apparently don’t own at all. I guess I must have gotten it from the library. Anyway, I finally settled on a nice hardcover, and I’m happy with my decision. Plus I got this great picture of him. Didn’t get to talk to him much, but that’s okay. Not sure what I would have said. The conversation mostly centered around Charlie, talking about writing and politics. He says he’s not writing any more in the Iron Sunrise post-Singularity universe, which is too bad because I really like those stories. He related some stats on the death penalty that suggest we shouldn’t be killing people. The wife and I talked to his wife about beer – she was looking for weird American stuff they can’t get back home in Scotland, which is exactly my attitude when traveling. I will never understand those who travel abroad and want hamburgers and Budweiser. It was a good night. We got a little wet walking home, but since this was the warmest day we’ve had since last summer, and it didn’t rain too hard, it wasn’t too unpleasant.

Trying to write about something other than baseball

So, I’m trying to think of something I want to write about rather than rehash yesterday’s Orioles game. No one wants to hear about it – O’s fans will just get depressed, and the Rays don’t have any fans. Maybe the players’ mothers. Anyway. So I thought I might write about Quacker of the House Nancy Pelosi advising the President to boycott the Olympic opening ceremonies to protest China’s all-around unpleasantness, but then I was reading the article and my eyes started to glaze over. No one cares what advice Nancy Pelosi has for President Bush. She’d be more likely to get a reaction out of a large rock. Then I thought I should say something about IBM’s temporary suspension from getting federal contracts for some horrendous thing they did to EPA that no one will explain. This is huge news, but until we get some more details, it isn’t all that interesting. Or maybe it’s not interesting because my mind is refusing to grasp the massive incompetence or malice necessary to actually be disciplined by the government at all. But really, the most exciting thing about today is that I plan to go meet Charles Stross at the Brickskeller tonight. He’s one of my favorite authors, and he’s in town for something or other. He claims he’s trying to fend off jet-lag, but anyone going to a place with a beer list like this is merely fending off sobriety.