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The 20 most recent journal entries:
| Friday, 13th November, 2009 | ||
| 8:08 am | returning... Finally getting back to writing. After going to the hospital on monday, doctor, blood test, etc on tuesday, volunteer work at the charity shop on wednesday, and total slacko reading addiction to the book I'd been consuming during those previous days, I am back, at last to my writing. Yay! I seriously doubt I'll make it past the finishing line in the month though. No worries. I'll try anyway. :) Maybe I'll do NaNoWriMo the way it's supposed to be done: without checking and re-reading -- just blasting the words and ideas out there, full pelt. Oh, and the book I'd been compulsively reading? Stephenie Meyer's "The Host". I thoroughly enjoyed it. | |
| Sunday, 8th November, 2009 | ||
| 9:21 am | error in chapter 2 Lucky for me I have a couple of people reading the story. I'm very grateful to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} dorjejaguar for noticing that brewer's yeast might not contain any vitamin B12 after all. I've added a note in red text at that point in the story (a little more than halfway through chapter 2) til I work out a way to alter the story so that it works.Thanks again dorjejaguar for coming to my rescue. | |
| Saturday, 7th November, 2009 | ||
| 6:05 pm | chapter 3 - night 3165 words (5.5 pages) Latest installment is up on my site at http://miriam-english.org/stories/seeki I'm falling behind. Way too slack. I need to write another 4,000 words by this time tomorrow to have a hope of catching up. Not very likely. :( Still I plod on. The story is taking some turns I hadn't quite counted on, at least I hadn't really wanted them this early in the story. But the characters want it that way, so I can't do a lot about it. I'm just the writer. :/ Let me know what you think. | |
| Friday, 6th November, 2009 | ||
| 7:42 am | 3420 words (6.5 pages) I know the idea of NaNoWriMo is to frantically get words down on pages and to avoid revising them till it is done. Well, chapter 2 was really bugging me and it wasn't even finished so I was naughty and went over it today. It lost me a lot of time, but it reads quite a bit better now (still needs a proper rewrite though). Instead of posting it here I've edited my previous LJ post. In future I might simply give a link to my story instead of pasting it behind an lj-cut tag. It would make posting it much simpler. If anybody prefers the whole thing in LJ then please let me know. Or if the link to the story is preferable for you then don't be bashful; let me know. The link for all chapters is always http://miriam-english.org/stories/seeki Tell me what you think of this first draft so far. Now to get on and write today's installment... wish me luck... :) | |
| Monday, 2nd November, 2009 | ||
| 10:22 pm | ||
| Sunday, 1st November, 2009 | ||
| 2:07 pm | Seeking Reason - chapter 1 - awakening 3010 words (about 4.5 pages) Let me know what you think. I feel like I'm off to a pretty good start and feel more confident about it than I thought I would. I have a lot of ground to cover though and hope I don't leave my audience -- both of you :) -- too confused. Note that the whole thing, as I write it, will always be uploaded to my website at: http://miriam-english.org/stories/seekin I'll also post each chapter to LiveJournal for your convenience. The first chapter is here... ( behind this tag )
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| Saturday, 31st October, 2009 | ||
| 11:33 pm | start your engines... Almost midnight... Will I stay up long enough to start tonight? Or will I get much needed sleep? | |
| 7:07 am | drum roll... Tonight at midnight (here in Australia) NaNoWriMo begins. Scary, scary. I haven't done my usual degree of planning for this year's story. This alone predicts my failure this time, however I might manage anyway because this story is quite different to any I've tried before. It has no "normal" structure. Most stories have an introduction, some device to build tension (like a journey or problem to solve), and then a climax where some kind of resolution is found. I don't think it's easy for this story to have have any of that. Normally I plan the beginning, the ending, and significant milestones in between, mapping most of the chapters onto them. This time I've planned the beginning, the logic behind the story, and some of the major points I want to cover. Generally the ending is the second part of the story I map out, but not this time. I have an idea for the ending, but am not sure if I want to use it, so it is still up in the air. Oddly, I don't think that really matters with this story. I've never tried this approach before. It would be extremely easy for it not to work. My first NaNoWriMo tried to make a story (Insurance) which I'd intended to avoid conflict. In the end I screwed up because I panicked, and added in some conflict at the last moment (the cyborg discontent) and blew it. I then had neither the story I wanted, nor a "good" standard story. On many levels that story failed, even though I remain rather proud of all the ideas I conveyed though it. I must rewrite it one day and try to yank the conflict (except for the calamity near the end -- I always intended that). Insurance would always have been clumsy because I'd written it like a series of short stories instead of a long-form story. Also something about it made it feel like a young adult story -- not what I was aiming for... especially with the bits of sex in there. This year I'm hoping I can remain true to my aims and still produce something useful. We'll see. It could so easily turn into a fragmented mess. I have a lot more demands on my time this year so it is quite likely I won't finish inside the month. I'm quite okay with that. I'll try to keep going anyway. Most importantly I hope I can produce something worth reading. I know I'm not a terribly good story writer, but each NaNoWriMo I notice significant improvement. This time I hope I make something I'm satisfied with. But if not, at least I'm trying. :) Janet Evanovich wrote 11 novels before she created something saleable. I'm happy to keep slogging. | |
| Thursday, 15th October, 2009 | ||
| 8:16 am | open hardware This is one revolution I've been wishing for... and now they're doing it with stuff that should let you build lots of things. http://www.evilmadscientist.com/art Get involved here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/701 Cool! I want some. | |
| 7:34 am | NaNoWriMo soon  Only 2 weeks to NaNoWriMo. Eeeek!I'm going to try again this year. Anybody else going to have a shot at it? The story I'm trying to map out will present a whole slew of difficulties, but it is one I'd really like to tell. This means that even if I don't finish it in the month I think I'll keep on with it. I hope I can manage it. | |
| Sunday, 11th October, 2009 | ||
| 11:35 am | weight and spoken thinking I was chatting with an old friend last night. She was concerned about her weight. She tends to have meat at every meal and eats a lot of sweets. She knows my views on sweets so I left that alone, but instead suggested she go easy on the meat, perhaps cutting back to once a week. She replied that she'd heard meat doesn't put on weight; starch does. I thought for a moment and asked her where were all the overweight vegetarians and skinny butchers then? Interesting. I'd never really thought about it till I said it. Isn't it weird that you can hold information in your head but never connect it till it escapes your mouth. Often I can resolve a problem simply by talking to someone about it. The other person doesn't even need to really listen; just the act of explaining it seems to make new connections in the brain. We are such strange creatures. | |
| Friday, 9th October, 2009 | ||
| 7:33 am | goodwill, charity, optimism Hmmm... I think I should have used the word "disbelief" instead of "atheism", and "non-believer" instead of "atheist" in order to avoid touching sensitive nerves. The campaign against atheists has been waged for so long that even very smart people don't seem to be conscious of the buttons it pushes in them. Wish I'd had the brains to have realised this earlier. I think I accidentally pissed off some good people. I read another piece by the wise and insightful nun Joan Chittister, and though I agree with most of her writings, I just had to reply to her on this one. She was talking about why people should worship god. Her reasons were the same ones many religious people put forward: that morality, humility, and optimism require belief in a god. It is so amazingly backwards, and I was very surprised to hear someone of her intelligence to proclaim such nonsense. I know a lot of religious people and a lot of atheists. In general I have to say the atheists are better human beings than the religious folk. The atheists tend to be more optimistic about the world and our chances of fixing it, they are more tolerant of others, and are mostly more humble. (Note that I'm talking about large numbers of people so this doesn't necessarily apply to any individual case -- I know religious people who I'm delighted to call my friends, and atheists who I tend to avoid, and vice versa, but when looking at an average the atheists definitely are better people overall.) I often encounter this misunderstanding of atheists; that they are a sour, unhappy, uncharitable lot. Some time back I was told by a friend, who I only knew through the net, that the show "My So-Called Life" was superb. I valued her judgment, so when I found the DVD set recently I bought it. My friend was right, and I love the series. However one particular episode really put my teeth on edge, where a homeless kid was saved and a very strong religious message was sent, associating religion with warmth, charity, and family. It also implied that lack of religion was associated with cold, loneliness, and selfishness. How annoying! The more it is studied, the more it is found that virtually every social ill that humans are prey to increases with religion. The healthiest, happiest, most generous societies on Earth are atheist. The most intolerant, violent, unhappy societies are religious. Here is some info on research that shows how mistaken is the standard view of the effect of religion upon societies: http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/200 (I posted an easier to read version on my site at: http://miriam-english.org/alia/religion An audio recording of an interview with Gregory Paul: http://miriam-english.org/files/Phillip Adams interviews Gregory Paul 2005-10-04.mp3 http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07 (I must convert that pdf document to more easily used html.) | |
| Wednesday, 23rd September, 2009 | ||
| 8:08 pm | 3 kids send camera to near-Earth space for US$150  How cool is this?Oliver Yeh, Justin Lee, and Eric Newton sent a cheap digital camera up 28km into near-Earth space to take photos, then return to Earth for recovery... all for the cost of $150 (AU$170). On their website (http://space.1337arts.com) they describe how their incredibly ingenious, surprisingly low-tech procedure. They've also posted the pictures there, and a time-lapse video compiled from them on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCBBRRp9 and on Vimeo for those in China, behind the internet censor (a fate soon to befall Australia if we don't get our act together) http://vimeo.com/6650343 How fabulous are these kids! | |
| 6:56 pm | internet censorship "trials" completing The government is shortly going to make a decision on whether the idiotic censorship of Australian internet will go ahead now that the "trials" are ending. This obscenity will slow the net down, block legitimate sites, be easy for the bad guys to circumvent, will cost many millions of dollars to operate, and will give an unaccountable few the ability to secretly muzzle anybody. Sign the petition at: http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/AddThe GetUp has managed to get more than 100,000 signatures to this so far. The more we get the greater chance we have of stopping the government proceeding with this obscenity. This Friday GetUp will publish the petition in The Australian newspaper. You have about one day to add your name and to get as many of your friends as possible to add their names too. This is very important. Don't let Australia become a laughing stock. Our damn country is moving backwards! If you want to contribute to GetUp to help them buy more space with more impact then contribute some money to them at: https://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveT See more info on why the attempt at censorship can't possibly work: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/techno | |
| Sunday, 13th September, 2009 | ||
| 10:44 pm | scrolling pic Yay! I did it. The RandomWalks cartoons should no longer screw up peoples' friends pages because I've worked out how to make them scroll inside the page. The trick is to surround the image tag with div tags like this: <div style="overflow: scroll"><img src="some_image" width="pixels" height="pixels"></div>This puts scrollbars below and to the right of the picture so that if it doesn't fit in the page, instead of widening the table the picture accommodates the page. Cool huh? Took me a lot of detective work to figure this out. Couldn't find it documented anywhere. | |
| Saturday, 12th September, 2009 | ||
| 12:16 pm | another RandomWalk Thanks to dorjejaguar for noticing and reminding me. I forgot to announce this one a few days back. I've been kinda busy for a while so it slipped my mind. I'm hoping to finish another cartoon today. The waterbear (also known as the tardigrade) is possibly the cutest of all microscopic creatures. Some grow up to one and a half millimeters long -- big enough to see with the naked eye. They were named "waterbears" because their movements resemble those of bears -- yes, really. It is quite uncanny. They are astonishingly able to survive the most extreme environments, such as boiling in alcohol, drying out, very high levels of radiation, and even the vacuum of space. Now their ability to survive may help us. | |
| Sunday, 23rd August, 2009 | ||
| 2:40 pm | science fiction and Star Trek Gah! I shouldn't be writing this -- I should be cleaning up this mess for Julie's visit... I am such a slob! Over the past months I've been watching episodes of "Star Trek - The Next Generation" on DVD. I never saw it on TV because frankly the idea of a human future, regimented and militaristic in nature always repelled me. However I have been an avid reader of science fiction since I was in Primary school and as a lot of my friends are "fans" of Star Trek TNG I felt I owed it to myself to be able to make an honest judgment of the series. Many times I have winced and gritted my teeth through episodes of Star Trek and shaken my head at the lack of logic. Evolution, in particular, is completely misunderstood repeatedly by writers of that series... though, to be fair, I've noticed the general population of USA has an appalling lack of understanding of evolution, so the writers are really just repeating the prevalent misconceptions. Evolution gets treated as a kind of god -- something that purposefully shapes lifeforms to the best possible outcome. This simply swaps one mystical god for another. But there is nothing mysterious or pre-ordained about evolution. There is nothing complicated about it either: variations that survive pass on their traits, and those that don't, don't. Evolution results in many mistakes; look at our wisdom teeth, our inability to make vitamin C, and the light receptors in our retinas pointing the wrong direction. Evolution is not some higher power that guides life along a particular course, it is simply a word that refers to changes in populations. One of the things that rears its head again and again in the show is the idea that emotion and logic are at odds. The android character Data is the exemplar of this kind of erroneous thinking. He is supposedly without emotion. The trouble is that emotion is inextricably part of all mental activity because it is what powers it. Without emotion there can be no being. Why would an emotionless creature do anything at all? They wouldn't. They would be entirely passive. Emotion is simply why we do things. Excessive emotion can cause problems because the action or reaction doesn't fit the situation, but it is not emotion itself that is the problem. Thought requires emotion. One aspect of Star Trek that has always deeply troubled me is the absolute acceptance of a regimented, military chain of command. The USA seems to have become mostly a warrior culture. I have a feeling that it is largely invisible to the inhabitants of that country because it is so pervasive, just as you cease to hear a constant background noise after a time. It has always impressed me as a very strange thing, as citizens of USA have generally believed themselves great proponents of freedom and democracy, yet military chain of command is the very antithesis of those. I truly hope we don't end up with the Star Trek vision of the future. I'd hope for a more cooperative, leisurely society where people associated with their fellows because they wished the best for each other; not because they were bound together under a dictator (benevolent or otherwise). Thankfully, in recent years open source developments like Linux, Wikipedia, and others make a peaceful, sharing, benevolent, future society of equals look more likely. One aspect of Star Trek that is hopeful and leaves me with mostly nice feelings is the way they generally try to be inclusive of people, regardless of race, sex, etc. There is even an attempt to extend that inclusion to ugly people. Bad people in the show still tend to look scruffy or weasely, and good people are well groomed and generally look attractive, but this isn't always as pronounced as in other shows. Unfortunately one area of humanity pointedly ignored and not included by the series is homosexuality. I find that very disappointing. I'm about halfway through the series. I doubt it will calm my misgivings, but at least it tries to cover some important philosophical points. This what I always liked most about SF: the way it can examine our assumptions, often turning our viewpoint upside down in the process. Star Trek doesn't do that as vigorously as "true" science fiction, but I have to admit it does try harder than much of the stuff that passes for entertainment. | |
| Sunday, 16th August, 2009 | ||
| 4:49 pm | another RandomWalks cartoon Well, so much for hoping to post one per day. My slackness is showing. Here is the latest RandomWalks cartoon. Let me know what you think. As an experiment I won't put this one behind an LJ-cut tag unless someone yells that I'm messing the formatting of their friends page. If it bugs you, please do let me know and I'll hide it behind a cut. Anyway, without further ado...  | |
| Thursday, 13th August, 2009 | ||
| 7:16 am | Writer's Block: Proven by Science It seems pretty obvious that everything has a scientific explanation. Science is the study of reality. By its nature it opens up more questions as it provides more answers, but there is nothing mystical about this. Imagine all knowledge as an infinite plane. What you know is the illuminated area inside a spotlight on that plane; what you don't know is the dark region around it; your questions constitute the circumference of the spotlight. People who don't know much have few questions. People who know more have many more questions. This is natural and invigorating. Religion, mysticism, superstition all close off inquiry. Science inquires. | |
| Sunday, 9th August, 2009 | ||
| 2:30 pm | outrageous scam site!!! Today I accidentally happened across this scam site that seems to intercept google searches somehow (I was trying to find out what would dissolve a particular epoxy resin called Araldite here in Australia). Google came up with a lot of results, including this fake site called onlinesecurescannerv3.com At first it came up with an annoying pop-up telling me that my computer is infected and would I like to do an online scan. I cancelled, but it pretended to do a scan anyway and came up with the utterly amazing screen which I've put behind this lj-cut tag: ( here ) How astonishing is the level of work that has gone into that! I had no idea the scammers had gotten so sophisticated now. The window looks just like a standard Microsoft Windows file view. The red warnings of numbers of trojans in "Shared Documents" and the two hard drives blink to attract attention, the green fake scanning line grew to the right, and the blue window could be moved around just like a real window. Just one problem... I'm using Linux and my system looks nothing like this. Even when I used to use MSWindows I always used a different color scheme from the standard. When I dragged the fake "Windows Security Alert" window to the side the site tried to send me an installable file. If I'd been using Microsoft InternetExplorer on Microsoft Windows this might not have even notified me (I'm not sure if they fixed that security hole yet) before installing it. Even if I saved the file to my machine on Linux I doubt it would have run. I don't use Wine because of just such risks (Wine lets Linux fool programs into thinking they are in a MSWindows machine thus allowing them to run). Once installed on the machine I shudder to think what such a program could do. Horrifying. I wonder how many people are sucked in by such assholes. I hope the cops come down on these scum-sucking bastards. Warn as many people as possible of the dangers of such sites. The only real safety here is knowledge. | |