| Tried to sleep |
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| 12:06am 22/09/2009 |
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Didn't entirely succeed
Finished a book I got from Interlibrary Loan, Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory.
Mostly it's a pretty good book. The premise is a mostly-normal world, but one where demonic possession is real and fairly common. Scary, a bit, and intriguing. I enjoyed it very much up until one point that kind of brought me to a screeching halt.
( (Spoiler, or something) ) |
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| Behold, it speaks! |
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| 09:47am 27/07/2009 |
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So I occasionally read Patrick O'Brian novels, the Aubrey/Maturin series (and I, of course, laugh every time I see their names spelled with a slash) and enjoy them pretty well. I expected them to be books about manly men doing manly stuff on manly ships and so on. They have that, but they go much deeper than that, they have much more characterization than that. The heroes of the stories are are heroes of their own time--they are musicians, poets, and natural philosophers as well as dedicated soldiers who fight with great courage aboard floating wooden platforms loaded with explosives. O'Brian even goes into the lives and occupations of women, gays, and non-whites and comments on the norms of the day in mild ways.
What strikes me most about these books, however, is that this is how science fiction must feel to most non-science-y people. There is a diagram at the front of each book to identify which sail is which and that is it. You either know what the nautical terminology they are talking about means or you can just sort of smile and continue reading, if you don't feel like going to the internet every five minutes. Now, generally, there is enough context to tell you what all this fluff they're talking is trying to do--speed up the ship, turn faster, what have you. But still, it's very jargon-heavy.
It is very clear that O'Brian is one of the biggest nerds who ever lived.
One of the biggest nerds, who has written a long series of nerd-books, peppered liberally with language that really is difficult for the layman to read--but they're still good, character-driven narratives with a lot of merit. So are many sci-fi novels. Sci-fi, especially newer offerings, tends to assume you either know science or you will read something else. To a large degree, this is true, though it is unclear to what degree this is due to genre ghettoization versus genuine impenetrability.
I am simply struck by the contrast, as quite a few science fiction stories, good and bad, are about ships. |
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| Really weird dream |
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| 11:47am 01/05/2009 |
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I sometimes have nightmares when I get too warm at night and/or when I am stressed, because rather than just try and let me rest a little or throw off the blankets in my sleep, my body's response is rather to stop breathing and suffer.
( Dream ) |
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| Difference in days |
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| 10:47am 30/04/2009 |
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Tuesday was <rage> for various reasons, partly just stress.
Wednesday was <you have been awarded a fellowship for the 2009-2010 school year for excellent performance \o/> and free Korean food for all .
Today is <zzz> being too old for anything but sleeping.
This week has been kind of an emotional bracket rollercoaster. |
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| Rrrgh. |
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| 12:54pm 28/04/2009 |
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This keeps happening and it really fucking angers me. Last time it was Microsoft with XBL, now it's Bioware, a company that's done better for itself in the past. But, hey, just doing something good when you were working on smaller-scale properties of one's own company doesn't get you a free pass when you are too fucking cowardly to include or even allow discussion in a major property.
It's discrimination, it sucks, and I hope all those people trying to claim that "sex has no place in games" while ogling the hot alien chicks in bizarre bras choke on their oozing straight privilege.
A different examination of what initially seems like an unrelated question is here. The basic premise is wondering about whether games as a market are ready to approach genuinely "Mature" topics rather than simply slapping an M on games that choose to market themselves for flying limbs and gallons of blood. I don't think "gay" is a topic that requires an M label in and of itself, obviously, but I find the question of controversy in games an interesting one; they are often held to a much higher standard of "decency" due to the supposed aim at children--though those kids are getting awful big, at an average of over thirty now. |
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| Cure for what hails you |
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| 01:15pm 26/03/2009 |
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music: The sweet silence of nothing hitting the glass
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So Austin got hailed on yesterday. At least part of it. My part. The sky attacked my house with ice bullets, though the only casualties were one of my bedroom windows (@#$@!) and my car's poor stippled hide.
I actually took pictures of the hail on the ground amidst a plentiful litter of severed tree debris because they were the size of golf balls though I didn't bring them with me to upload or nothin'. Maybe later. My cat slunk around expecting to die at any second during the roughly ten minutes of the storm's duration.
Lots of other windows were broken, and I could see some shattered windshields outside. I just got off the phone with my insurance company and they report lots of reports. I had to fight to get a slot with the body shop for an estimate tomorrow. My landlord is having a guy come out to deal with the windows today, theoretically, so maybe my A+ classy aluminum-foil-cardboard repair job won't have to stick it out over the weekend while I will theoretically be out of town.
If I never see hail that big again in my life I think I will be happily content. I had just walked home from the bus stop not fifteen minutes before it started up. |
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| The British gift for prophecy |
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| 02:35pm 09/03/2009 |
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From a speech delivered in parliament by Thomas Macaulay in 1841
"I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which the House has listened to me, that I will not detain you longer. I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot."
It's long, but people talked long back then since they weren't trying to fit quotes into soundbytes. It's also an extremely lucid analysis of the very same issues plaguing copyright today, and mercilessly dissects the evils of a law very much akin to the Mickey Mouse Protection Act passed in the United States.
No particular reason for yet another modern IP law rant really, I just really like those speeches that guy made. |
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(Go off half-cocked) |
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| No Gold for me... |
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| 08:22am 26/02/2009 |
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I commented on something similar to this a long while back with a WoW Guild--a Blizzard rep acting outside of company policy moved to restrict a 'gay-friendly' guild on the servers. Blizzard revoked the ruling and apologized pretty quickly.
X-Box Live Gold, not so much.
Lesbian banned for word "lesbian" in profile.
This isn't the first incident of Live acting to remove openly gay players from the service and certainly doesn't begin to touch on the conduct of other players on said service (apparently most of the customer base comes from the same cesspool of humanity as Youtube commenters) but it's the first I've heard of profile information being used to target someone rather than extremely misguided word-filtering. In any case, I think I'll just not pay for their service and explain in detail to anyone who asks exactly why. |
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| For the sake of some content |
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| 04:08pm 29/01/2009 |
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcIiwmclfvw is Winnie the Pooh only in Soviet Russia. No, seriously. It's reasonably attentive to the story so far as I can tell, but it's ah, different in many other respects.
Grad school continues to be a massive time-devouring beast of an endeavor, but kinda fun despite that. It is a level at which finally the more work I put in, the more I get back out of it, at least within the realm that I can manage. Doing grad school and work at the same time is of course more difficult. My professors demand much from us ("read this textbook that undergrads would use for an entire semester. in a week.") but they give more back in terms of individual attention. As an added bonus, my classmates are not morons. There are some who are not good at ending thoughts concisely but they are in general engaged with the material, and that anti-intellectual attitude that permeates so much of society isn't present. I can see why people end up wanting to stay in academia forever. I am still not going to do that, but it is a nice refuge.
Of course, my time left over from that is fairly limited, and I am so tired for much of what is left that I don't end up doing a whole lot besides. I still see friends now and again, or go out for a bit, but often I just enjoy having some few hours of silence and maybe playing a video game for a couple of minutes. I still manage a little reading for pleasure on the bus when not reading for school on the bus. Or sleeping on the bus, since my body has apparently trained itself to go unconscious the second the thing starts moving for home.
We've actually crossed the hump in terms of numbers of documents arriving here, I think. There's the usual pile of unopened buckets in the assistant director's office, but you can walk inside which is a sign of progress. The phonecalls now are less often about the severely nonfunctional-despite-being-live reference system and more whinging about sent documents not instantly being processed or protesting rulings on officiality or whatever, the normal stuff. Still in overtime, still lots to do.
For now, going to work late tonight to try and catch up on more stuff and also more money. I have gotten so boring I cannot think of anything else to write about and really would like to take a nap. Instead, I will continue working. Leisure time has been scheduled for a portion of the weekend, and perhaps somewhere also, sleep.
Edited to also add a very political very hilarious video: http://www.236.com/video/2009/a_236_propaganda_production_ga_11005.php |
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Taken from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) aikido_al |
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| 05:41pm 01/12/2008 |
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Female Artist too fat for label
This is Amanda Palmer from the Dresden Dolls who is, quite frankly, totally hot in that video. But not to this 'Roadrunner Records' I guess, who refused to promote Palmer or her album and video because her belly was supposedly too fat and thus "uncommercial." Hey, I guess I'm pretty uncommercial too!
Usually people are pretty dismissive of body image criticisms because we internalize cultural images and hate feminists but seriously, this is just insane. |
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| Fencejumping |
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| 04:13pm 21/10/2008 |
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music: The pounding headache of too much caffeine
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I know, I know, I should rile myself to post some original content, write something, hundred word horror stories or whatever, but gosh darn it I'm so tired and busy.
However, I did feel it was important to announce that I might just go straight for Jon Stewart. |
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(Go off half-cocked) |
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| Nerd Rage Part II |
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| 01:31pm 17/10/2008 |
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http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2332733,00.asp
The above link is really short; I suggest reading it. While I am all in favor of respect for religion, that includes respect for religious tolerance--which includes putting up with people who don't share one's own beliefs, like, oh, the idea that religious verses mixed with pop music are offensive. US Christians used to believe that rock music was the product of the devil. Nowadays many services utilize it directly, and the Christian Rock industry is quite enormous.
But more importantly than cultural change, Sony is hamfistedly holding the rest of us to this guy's religious standard. They have other options. Modern consoles let manufacturers issue patches. They could add one to take out the "offensive" track or even to let users select a custom soundtrack of the offerings they prefer. I mean this is not a case of someone calling for the destruction of Muslims in their music. Folks remember when Catholics got all upset and sent out big mailings and junk about Dogma? They still put the movie out. Offended Catholics had the right and the ability to make their case and then just not go see it and thus not support what they felt to be an offensive enterprise. Hooray capitalism!
I am glad that the user requested nicely, and I hope that ensuing dialogue can remain so for the most part. I'm just very annoyed.
Edit to add: More about the song; it's from a Grammy-award winning artist and received no storm of controversy prior to being included in the game. http://www.joystiq.com/2008/10/17/inside-the-lbp-delay-a-grammy-award-winning-artists-2006-song/ |
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