Motivate

Along the lines of people from walmart, I recently found another site to peruse that will help fight the humpday blues (full disclosure: I discovered the site when I was searching for a pic that always makes me smile... to find said pic, type: "quickly children into Pikachu's" -- google will fill in the rest... hilarious if you haven't seen it before, and still pretty sweet if you have)

RIP Kindle: 11/19/07 - 1/26/10

One of the biggest events in my industry is the consumer electronics show (CES), a place where tech companies can demonstrate their newest, coolest toys. The big thing at this year's CES was tablets. Now, while I have a hard time seeing a large market for these 10" amped up iTouches (tablets, btw, found little market insertion a decade ago when they were also going to be the "next big thing."), there's a large drive to get these suckers to market (and, in fairness, the technology today is far more conducive for success than that of yesteryear).

Apple, the spoiled princess of the group, rarely shows her nifty gadgetry at CES, instead waiting for the ugly stepchildren to go home before attending the ball... their own ball, January 26th, in which they'll present something that many think will be a game-changer (expect large stock movement either direction next Wednesday).

Steve Jobs, Apple's normally brilliant CEO, will not let pride or an incorrect diagnosis stop him from chomping into the e-reader market with iPod-like tenacity. Amazon's Kindle has enjoyed marked success, but because of its limited functionality and a price-tag that will quickly become obsolete, methinks the Apple assassin will claim yet another victim.

Ah! My Ears!

I am so glad I do not have children right now. Specifically, female children. Specifically specifically, female tween children.

I was on iTunes last night and saw this singer near the top of the downloaded music list named Justin Bieber, some 15-year-old from Canada youtube sensation turned recording artist. I thought boy-bands made me cringe, but Mr. Bieber makes me reminisce fondly about the days when NSync ruled the charts. To me, JB is the musical version of Twilight. I'm just waiting for Disney to get a hold of him.

For your listening enjoyment (you have been warned):

Screw The Easy Button

I had one of those weekends where nothing seemed to go right, one of those weekends where you're actually looking forward to Monday. Lo and behold, Monday comes along and smacks me upside the head for my ignorance of hope. I start off w/ a morning fender bender and end the day with a piggy moment that leaves me spectacle free and half-blind.  

Relativistic theory shows that forward time travel is possible, but I don't care about such things. If a physicist could prove reverse time travel and subsequently invent a machine that allowed even a couple of seconds of retrotemporal distortion, I would deify him/her. How awesome would it be to have our own personal Ctrl+Z button? Of course, we'd never get anything done b/c everyone would be reversing at everyone else's whim, but what's wrong with that, I say? Getting things done is so overrated.

What about you? Are you Easy (e.g., press a button and have an agent, voila) or Ctrl+Z?  And what would you do with your power?

God Hates Haiti (PG-13)

Didn't you hear? Evidently, the country has suffered years of torment because one Haitian a few hundred years back may or may not have made a pact with the devil to gain independence from French occupation. Now, making pacts w/ the devil isn't even against one of the 10 Commandments (though I'm sure it's implicit). Thou Shalt Not Kill ranks pretty high on the list, though, and, as I recall, we Americans did lots of unwarranted killing in our time (there's a reason we have things like The Trail of Tears), but somehow we haven't received nearly as much of God's wrath (though Katrina, evidently, was a sign of His unhappiness with us according to Robertson).

GMAFB.

Certain groups annoy me (e.g., sign-carrying hippies, politicians), but none gets my hackles up more than the religious crazies. What compels people to pile on to others' suffering? Fine, be apathetic, believe it's God's will/vengeance/etc, whatever, but if you can't say anything nice, just shut the fuck up and let the people who aren't sententious bastards do the heavy lifting.

Full Disclosure: I do not believe in a higher being, but were I a believer, I would sure as hell seek a divinity that's not the angry, resentful (and somewhat capricious) son of a bitch portrayed by Mr. Robertson.

Fluid Mechanics

No, I'm not talking Navier-Stokes today (nor will I ever :), though, in a quasi-analogous way, this post does focus on laminar (i.e., nonturbulent) and turbulent flow. In one of her very useful revision-o-rama posts, Mary Kole over at kidlit discussed what makes a hot plot. I'm reposting her drawing below:

To paraphrase her descriptions and to use fluid mechanics analogy:
1.) Protag in normal state (i.e., hovering between laminar/turbulent boundary) - usually the beginning chapter or 2.
2.) Protag in happy state (i.e., laminar, flowing right in the middle of the pipe) - usually the first 15 - 25% of book.
3.) Protag in unhappy/agitated state (hello turbulence) - most of the rest of book.
4.) Protag returns to new,better normal state (back to laminar, but now     protag's gone from steel pipe to a golden one).

A perfect example that follows this flowing arc is Harry Potter. (The movie Avatar follows this quite well too).

Now, one of my big big problems is I tend to skip right past section 2 (and sometimes skimp on section 1) and slip right on down the slide (always hated those calm stretches on the flume rides). With Kissing Dragons, I'm trying very hard not to press the accelerator, but even with an outline to guide me into calmer waters where the reader can become more familiar with the characters/setting (and thus establish a comfort level with the protag and a trust level with the author), I'm having a hard time because I want to keep veering toward the waterfall.

And more internal conflict comes when I think about a book like The Hunger Games, which doesn't really have a rise (though it does have some calm spots amongst the rapids). Calm spots I can do, I'm just not sure if I can float down the river for more than a page or two without tossing in some whirlpools.

What say you? Go with your natural flow, or fight the tide to get in line with most of the ships? (Okay, I promise no more nautical/fluidish analogies for the rest of the year).

Feeling Like an Ant Yet?

So, I had the oh so brilliant repeat revelation yesterday that there are a lot of frickin people in this world (the internet reminds me everyday w/ its vast legions of anonymous peons -- of which I include myself, lest you think this a derogatory slight against others -- i.e., we're all peons :).

Looking at this graph just shows me how insignificant we all are (yeah, this is a gloom and doom post :) Let's see, back in Charlemagne's time, it would have taken 40,000 Banes (like a Dane, where B replaces D and B = badass) to make up 1/100 of 1% of the population (admittedly, we were probably all serfs).

Today, it would take 700,000 Banes to make up 1/100 of 1% (and we're all living in China, along w/ our wives). If we look at optimistic (pessimistic?) estimates for high population, by the year 2050, it'll take 1,000,000 Banes. But heck, if we type long enough on those typewriters, we'll be able to reproduce the works of Shakespeare, right, or at least maybe figure out what it all means, where the ambiguous 'it' could refer to this post, our ant-ness, how the pyramids were built without aliens, or an infinitude of other possibilities (like, why is infinitude a word -- sounds like a lazy linguist came up with this one).

On a more positive note that has absolutely nothing to do with our freakish smallness (hey, at least we aren't really ants... could you imagine having to dodge all those shoes. Talk about major suckage), here's a funny vid (well, quasi-related, b/c, w/o so many ants, how would we have come up w/ the internet? We'd still be figuring out how to build trebouchets to get rid of those alien overlords):

Are You EGA, VGA, HD?

This is, of course, a resolution question (BTW - Happy New Year!) from a computer dork :). Me, I'm probably CGA - I don't believe too much in resolutions/goals b/c I think it sets us up for failure (I'm C-3P0, not Han Solo). Of course, that doesn't mean I'm not Air Force (Aim High - is that still their slogan?), it just means I don't enumerate my wants/desires/needs to remind me of potential failure.

What about you? Do you have specific resolutions? And are they high resolution (other than that one we all want, that 108" 1080p publishing contract :)?

PS - anybody else miss those EGA days?