Writing Update
I missed my normal post today. Fear not, I'll make tomorrow's extra-good. Ok, not really - it'll be about what you usually get. Which, if you're reading this, you must like or you wouldn't still be here. So there.
Anyway, today I revisited chapters 1-3, making some (mostly minor) adjustments based on the transcription of my notes, then proceeded on to begin chapter 4. It's barely begun, but tomorrow my whole focus will be on that chapter, as well as figuring out what to do with the little "partial chapter" I wrote a while back that currently doesn't have a home, but really needs to go somewhere in the vicinity of chapter 2.
If all goes really well tomorrow, I could conceivably complete chapter 4 and even touch on chapter 5, but let's not get crazy. Besides, the school district already sent out an email that they'll be watching the weather in the morning for possible delays. So much for a precious entire, uninterrupted day to focus on writing. Ugh!
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
No Notes is Good Notes
Writing update
Transcribing my notes, handwritten and electronic both, is at last complete. Whew! Not that having them transcribed and organized (somewhat) by categories is the be-all, end-all of actually being able to use these notes to write my first novel, but it's awfully damn close. I put a LOT of thought into various concepts for this novel between October of 2008 when I first had this idea (I could probably figure out the exact date with a little effort - I remember I had thought up the idea in the morning and then had gone straight to a seminar at the Visory Group offices about new telephony products. Some of the notes I just finished transcribing were written in my notepad during that meeting) and the present. Some of those ideas evolved quite a bit over time, and in some cases I simply forgot what I'd originally intended and the concepts didn't so much "evolve" as they were forgotten and replaced with something similar but slightly different. Now that I have them all in once place, I can at last figure out what to use and what to discard.
The same applies to the several, several (several) variations that I seem to have on the book's overall sequence of events. Again, I'd have a good idea, then I'd forget part or all of it and several months later I'd write down a fresh, also good idea that used some of the same elements, but replaced others with different (not necessarily better) ones. I need to reconcile all of those "plots" into something more workable and useful. I'll stop short of an actual outline (as I've had experience with detailed outlines that then crushed my enthusiasm for writing the book. Not this book, a different one which I still do plan to write someday), but I would like to figure out what story elements are worth using and be sure that I position the story in such a way that they fit in neatly.
And so, without further ado, the final tally of my notes, as exported from OneNote to Word (which it turns out isn't exactly hard, but it's more labor-intensive than I expected and certainly not a one-click process as it probably should be. You can very easily convert whole notebooks to a .pdf with a single click), and without counting research and other text that I didn't actually write myself:
Total Pages: 111
Total Words: 43,143
Given that some mainstream fiction novels can be as little as 55,000 words, I've darn near written a book already. Albeit one without a discernible plot, theme, dialogue, setting, or story of any kind. But it's encouraging to know that, at minimum, I CAN write that much. Not that I really doubted it. I can (and have) blather on, in person or in print, for hours and hours about pretty much any subject or no subject at all. Turning word-count into quality storytelling, well, that remains to be proven. It's something, though, and something's surely better than nothing.
Now, back to my dungeon.
Transcribing my notes, handwritten and electronic both, is at last complete. Whew! Not that having them transcribed and organized (somewhat) by categories is the be-all, end-all of actually being able to use these notes to write my first novel, but it's awfully damn close. I put a LOT of thought into various concepts for this novel between October of 2008 when I first had this idea (I could probably figure out the exact date with a little effort - I remember I had thought up the idea in the morning and then had gone straight to a seminar at the Visory Group offices about new telephony products. Some of the notes I just finished transcribing were written in my notepad during that meeting) and the present. Some of those ideas evolved quite a bit over time, and in some cases I simply forgot what I'd originally intended and the concepts didn't so much "evolve" as they were forgotten and replaced with something similar but slightly different. Now that I have them all in once place, I can at last figure out what to use and what to discard.
The same applies to the several, several (several) variations that I seem to have on the book's overall sequence of events. Again, I'd have a good idea, then I'd forget part or all of it and several months later I'd write down a fresh, also good idea that used some of the same elements, but replaced others with different (not necessarily better) ones. I need to reconcile all of those "plots" into something more workable and useful. I'll stop short of an actual outline (as I've had experience with detailed outlines that then crushed my enthusiasm for writing the book. Not this book, a different one which I still do plan to write someday), but I would like to figure out what story elements are worth using and be sure that I position the story in such a way that they fit in neatly.
And so, without further ado, the final tally of my notes, as exported from OneNote to Word (which it turns out isn't exactly hard, but it's more labor-intensive than I expected and certainly not a one-click process as it probably should be. You can very easily convert whole notebooks to a .pdf with a single click), and without counting research and other text that I didn't actually write myself:
Total Pages: 111
Total Words: 43,143
Given that some mainstream fiction novels can be as little as 55,000 words, I've darn near written a book already. Albeit one without a discernible plot, theme, dialogue, setting, or story of any kind. But it's encouraging to know that, at minimum, I CAN write that much. Not that I really doubted it. I can (and have) blather on, in person or in print, for hours and hours about pretty much any subject or no subject at all. Turning word-count into quality storytelling, well, that remains to be proven. It's something, though, and something's surely better than nothing.
Now, back to my dungeon.
101 Sci-Fi Movies You Must See Before You Die
I can’t die yet!!
I recently received this book as a Christmas gift from my friend John and I’m enjoying it very much. Each of the 101 movies gets a four-page spread including the original one-sheet (that’s theatre-talk for “poster”), a still from the film (that’s movie-talk for “single frame”) and a combination of a brief summary and critical analysis (that's high-brow talk for "nitpicking to death." Ha! No, actually most of the critical deconstruction is really quite insightful and shows a much deeper knowledge of film history than I have, to say the least).
This book served to remind me that I don’t watch movies critically. I watch them to be entertained. Case in point – I loved TRON as a kid, and still pretty much do. I think it tells a great story (the rebellion of the oppressed against a totalitarian state, where the belief in higher ideals (the users) gives them a power that the soulless (literally!) and brutal dictator (the Master Control Program) can’t overcome or obliterate. It’s got a guy with magic powers (Flynn), a heroic champion (Tron), and it does it all in a completely unique and original (at the time, anyway) environment – the virtual world (before it was even called the virtual world). The review of TRON in the book, however, is pretty much one big put-down, which I suppose is because a) it lost a ton of money and b) it didn’t actually have all that much computer-generated graphics, even though it touted them as a key feature. About the only thing the editors and I agreed on is that TRON belongs in the 101 best sci-fi movies, which I suppose is enough. I’m going to continue to re-watch it because I think it’s a great film in its own right.
But despite the book’s editors’ views on TRON, I think it’s a great read. There are little trivia facts about many of the movies, and it’s fun to look back to the beginning (the early 1900s) and follow the history of Sci-fi films right up to the modern day (or thereabouts – the book has a publication date of 2009, but there aren’t any movies in it beyond 2006. I suspect this is because the editors originally assembled a book titled “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die,” then chunked that book up into “Sci-Fi,” “Gangster,” “War,” and a couple of other categories. I, too, would like to write one book and then live off variations of it for several years thereafter. Bravo!).
What’s also really neat, or at least coincidental, is that the night before I was given this book, I sat down, flipped through my “TiVo Suggestions” and discovered that it had recorded the original 1951 version of “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” which I had never seen. I know, right? There aren’t too many mainstream sci-fi movies in the book that I haven’t seen, but I’d missed that one and had always wondered what it was about. Well I watched it, enjoyed it (Klaatu barada nikto! Which phrase, incidentally, is hanging on the wall of Alan’s (Bruce Boxleitner) cubicle in the movie Tron. Ha! Maybe I should write one of these books. Actually that’s not a terrible idea – I’ll need to add it to my list of possibilities) and couldn’t wait to read all about it in my new book the next day.
And, as it happens, I’ve seen 53 of the 101 movies listed. Of the remaining 48, around 15 of them are foreign films that I’m sure are quite lovely, but that I really have no interest in seeing (and my wife, with whom I watch all my movies, would have even less). So I’ve got just over 30 movies left to see, them I’m home free. Well, except for all the films I’m missing from all the other “Movies You Must See Before You Die” books in the series. I suppose I’ll just have to hang on a bit longer.
I’m 2/3 of the way through the book and plan to read it cover-to-cover. If you’re a genre film buff or just a movie fan in general (like me), you could do a lot worse than picking up one of these books and diving in. Thanks, John!
I recently received this book as a Christmas gift from my friend John and I’m enjoying it very much. Each of the 101 movies gets a four-page spread including the original one-sheet (that’s theatre-talk for “poster”), a still from the film (that’s movie-talk for “single frame”) and a combination of a brief summary and critical analysis (that's high-brow talk for "nitpicking to death." Ha! No, actually most of the critical deconstruction is really quite insightful and shows a much deeper knowledge of film history than I have, to say the least).
This book served to remind me that I don’t watch movies critically. I watch them to be entertained. Case in point – I loved TRON as a kid, and still pretty much do. I think it tells a great story (the rebellion of the oppressed against a totalitarian state, where the belief in higher ideals (the users) gives them a power that the soulless (literally!) and brutal dictator (the Master Control Program) can’t overcome or obliterate. It’s got a guy with magic powers (Flynn), a heroic champion (Tron), and it does it all in a completely unique and original (at the time, anyway) environment – the virtual world (before it was even called the virtual world). The review of TRON in the book, however, is pretty much one big put-down, which I suppose is because a) it lost a ton of money and b) it didn’t actually have all that much computer-generated graphics, even though it touted them as a key feature. About the only thing the editors and I agreed on is that TRON belongs in the 101 best sci-fi movies, which I suppose is enough. I’m going to continue to re-watch it because I think it’s a great film in its own right.
But despite the book’s editors’ views on TRON, I think it’s a great read. There are little trivia facts about many of the movies, and it’s fun to look back to the beginning (the early 1900s) and follow the history of Sci-fi films right up to the modern day (or thereabouts – the book has a publication date of 2009, but there aren’t any movies in it beyond 2006. I suspect this is because the editors originally assembled a book titled “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die,” then chunked that book up into “Sci-Fi,” “Gangster,” “War,” and a couple of other categories. I, too, would like to write one book and then live off variations of it for several years thereafter. Bravo!).
What’s also really neat, or at least coincidental, is that the night before I was given this book, I sat down, flipped through my “TiVo Suggestions” and discovered that it had recorded the original 1951 version of “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” which I had never seen. I know, right? There aren’t too many mainstream sci-fi movies in the book that I haven’t seen, but I’d missed that one and had always wondered what it was about. Well I watched it, enjoyed it (Klaatu barada nikto! Which phrase, incidentally, is hanging on the wall of Alan’s (Bruce Boxleitner) cubicle in the movie Tron. Ha! Maybe I should write one of these books. Actually that’s not a terrible idea – I’ll need to add it to my list of possibilities) and couldn’t wait to read all about it in my new book the next day.
And, as it happens, I’ve seen 53 of the 101 movies listed. Of the remaining 48, around 15 of them are foreign films that I’m sure are quite lovely, but that I really have no interest in seeing (and my wife, with whom I watch all my movies, would have even less). So I’ve got just over 30 movies left to see, them I’m home free. Well, except for all the films I’m missing from all the other “Movies You Must See Before You Die” books in the series. I suppose I’ll just have to hang on a bit longer.
I’m 2/3 of the way through the book and plan to read it cover-to-cover. If you’re a genre film buff or just a movie fan in general (like me), you could do a lot worse than picking up one of these books and diving in. Thanks, John!
Friday, December 11, 2009
Best. Concert. Ever.
When I was around 16, my friends introduced me to heavy metal music. This was the mid 1980s, and metal was gaining popularity in a big way. Knowing my fascination with military history, my buddy Bill played Iron Maiden’s “Alexander the Great” for me. I was instantly hooked, and ran out to buy their brand new album, “Somewhere in Time.” I devoured it – listening to each track over and over and over again, then going out and getting all their older albums, from “Powerslave to their debut “Iron Maiden” (which I never really liked all that much).
Within a few months, I was a devoted metalhead, thrilling to bands like Metallica, Dio, Black Sabbath, Ozzy, Queensrÿche, Judas Priest, Mötley Crüe, Anthrax, and Megadeth. It was a great time to be a metalhead – there was a ton of music to listen to, and it all varied widely from the intensive guitars and drums of Metallica to the blues riffs of Great White.
One album I especially enjoyed was Queensrÿche’s unique and cerebral concept album Operation: Mindcrime. I was fascinated by the music, the thought-provoking lyrics and the album’s ability to tell an engaging story through both the words and the tonal qualities of the music. My friends and I memorized every word, every riff, and every line of dialogue.
Throughout the late 1980s, I listened to heavy metal in my car, in my walkman, at home, at school, while cutting the grass, and pretty much anywhere else except when I was at work. And when I was at work, I sang heavy metal, much to the consternation of my (usually much older and way less hip) co-workers at the Wegmans Deli. I watched the Headbanger’s Ball on MTV (back when the M in MTV actually stood for Music) and even bought a very stylish Headbanger’s Ball T-Shirt, all black with the show’s logo in gold gothic lettering. It was to become one of my many, many, many black heavy-metal T-shirts, which constituted my entire wardrobe by the time I was 19.
The culmination of my infatuation with heavy metal occurred when Metallica’s “Damaged Justice” tour hit the United States in support of their album “And Justice for All.” Their opening act was none other than Queensrÿche. My friend and I were in heaven. I had joined the crew of guys I hung out with just slightly too late to attend an Ozzy Osbourne concert a few years earlier where they’d seen Metallica opening for Ozzy during their “Master of Puppets” tour – this was to be my first and last time seeing Metallica in concert.
My buddies and I were determined that we absolutely had to be in the front row for this concert. The tickets were to go on sale early on a Saturday morning at the War Memorial box office, so somebody was going to have to get in line early. Very early. Very, very early. Like, eleven o’clock at night early. In January.
So one Friday night, Jake Sensenich and I threw a bunch of snacks and sodas and blankets into my parents’ Dodge Aries and drove downtown. We dressed warmly – I even had a black and red ski mask. And we took a large box of heavy metal cassettes to help keep us fired up in the cold dark night. And cold and dark it was. We damn near froze our asses off down there.
It was a long, strange night in downtown Syracuse. A Dodge Aries isn’t very big, so we spent a fair amount of time out wandering around, with frequent trips back to the car to fire up the heater. There were a dozen or so other Metallica die-hards hanging out down there in the wee hours like us, but it wasn’t until the next morning that the line started to swell. And Jake and I were right near the front. Between the two of us we bought around fifteen tickets as I remember – all for the front-row, center-stage (or darn close to center, anyway). At the tender age of 18, it had been my most important, most rewarding mission to date, and I’d accomplished it masterfully. I’d even been the mission commander – it was my first foray into management.
Then all that was left was the waiting and the anticipation. On March 18th, 1989, my buddies and I all headed down to the War Memorial once again – Jake and me, of course, plus Bill, Brian, and Pat. Oh, and Mick Spillane, the guy we knew from Tape World who was supposed to come with us, but sent some barely-dressed bimbo instead. Whatever – his loss. There must have been some other guys there, but I’ll be darned if I can remember who they were. I probably didn’t care – all I wanted was to see Queensrÿche and Metallica live in concert.
The funny thing about Metallica fans is that they’re loyal to the band to the point of being really obnoxious and condescending about it. At some point in the band’s history, the fans had decided that opening acts were crap, and were somehow actively getting in the way of their pure Metallica enjoyment. So it was common practice at Metallica concerts for their more rabid fans – all wearing denim jackets with a Metallica patch emblazoned on the back – to face away from the stage and raise their middle fingers to the opening act. This was fine with me.
You see, my friends and I were just as excited to see Queensrÿche as we were to see Metallica. And we were in the front row. And we knew every lyric to every song by heart. And, as it turns out, we were pretty much the only ones there who gave a damn. When the concert started, we raced the ten feet to the stage and literally threw ourselves into the music, fists pumping, screaming, and absolutely ecstatic with the wonder of the experience.
Our enthusiasm was not lost on the band. Since nobody else there really seemed to want to watch them perform, and whereas we clearly adored them, Queensrÿche shifted their focus from the overall auditorium to the bunch of guys going nuts in the front row. It might as well have been a private concert just for us. It was glorious! And it was literally only the beginning!
Queensrÿche gave an outstanding performance of Operation: Mindcrime, complete with various sound effects and recorded voiceovers to match the grandeur of the album. They did some older stuff, too – the best tunes off their previous couple of albums. I don’t think I’d ever been as happy as I was just then.
It ended, as all things must, and during the intermission my friends and I returned to our front-row seats and raved about how utterly fantastic the show had been thus far. Somebody nearby reported that Queensrÿche was hanging out in some sort of break-room off in the bowels of the War Memorial, but we were all to chicken to go looking for them, as cool as that would have been. We just waited in rapt anticipation for the next show to begin.
Again, we were hardly disappointed. The lights dimmed, and up came the music – the haunting sound of Ennio Morricone’s “Ecstasy of Gold,” the song with which Metallica opened all their concerts. I don’t know why, as they weren’t actually playing it or anything, I guess it was just their thing. Whatever, it was damn cool and we were screaming too loud to hear it, our fists pumping again as we hung over the metal fencing, the crush of thousands more fans pressing at our backs. We could very nearly reach the stage.
The stage onto which Metallica was suddenly revealed with bright lights and flashpots and a gigantic statue of liberty unveiled behind them. Or maybe the statue of liberty came later – I really can’t recall. But what followed was some ninety minutes of ecstasy, not of gold but of two raging guitars, a thrumming bass and a giant drumset banging away in the back. They played virtually all of …And Justice for All, plus a wide array of prior hits including For Whom the Bell Tolls, Sanitarium, Master of Puppets, Am I Evil? and Creeping Death. We knew every chord, every beat, every word backwards and frontwards, and throughout each song we’d unleash a fury of excitement, burning ever last ounce of energy until we were spent. Then, with the opening bars of the next tune, we’d be reinvigorated and start in all over again, cheering and singing and feeling the music reverberate through our skin and bones and to the tip of every last nerve. It was a thrill unlike anything I’d ever felt up to that point in my young life. I came away with a T-shirt that I bought at the merchandise stand, plus a neon-green logo’d guitar pick that I’d caught out of mid-air when James Hetfield tossed it out at me. I also had my hands on one of his sweaty wristbands at one point, but I didn’t want it as badly as the guy who was trying to wrench it away from me and, though it’s not the most manly sentiment I’ve ever expressed… ewww. It was really, really sweaty. I’m a fan, but I’ve got to draw the line somewhere. I was more than satisfied with my pick. I still have it, to this day. Or, rather, my wife has it tucked away, but I’m sure she’d let me see it if I asked. But it’s just a pick, after all. A memento. But mementos are reminders – they serve to help us remember. I don’t need a memento for this – I remember. It was the best concert ever.
Within a few months, I was a devoted metalhead, thrilling to bands like Metallica, Dio, Black Sabbath, Ozzy, Queensrÿche, Judas Priest, Mötley Crüe, Anthrax, and Megadeth. It was a great time to be a metalhead – there was a ton of music to listen to, and it all varied widely from the intensive guitars and drums of Metallica to the blues riffs of Great White.
One album I especially enjoyed was Queensrÿche’s unique and cerebral concept album Operation: Mindcrime. I was fascinated by the music, the thought-provoking lyrics and the album’s ability to tell an engaging story through both the words and the tonal qualities of the music. My friends and I memorized every word, every riff, and every line of dialogue.
Throughout the late 1980s, I listened to heavy metal in my car, in my walkman, at home, at school, while cutting the grass, and pretty much anywhere else except when I was at work. And when I was at work, I sang heavy metal, much to the consternation of my (usually much older and way less hip) co-workers at the Wegmans Deli. I watched the Headbanger’s Ball on MTV (back when the M in MTV actually stood for Music) and even bought a very stylish Headbanger’s Ball T-Shirt, all black with the show’s logo in gold gothic lettering. It was to become one of my many, many, many black heavy-metal T-shirts, which constituted my entire wardrobe by the time I was 19.
The culmination of my infatuation with heavy metal occurred when Metallica’s “Damaged Justice” tour hit the United States in support of their album “And Justice for All.” Their opening act was none other than Queensrÿche. My friend and I were in heaven. I had joined the crew of guys I hung out with just slightly too late to attend an Ozzy Osbourne concert a few years earlier where they’d seen Metallica opening for Ozzy during their “Master of Puppets” tour – this was to be my first and last time seeing Metallica in concert.
My buddies and I were determined that we absolutely had to be in the front row for this concert. The tickets were to go on sale early on a Saturday morning at the War Memorial box office, so somebody was going to have to get in line early. Very early. Very, very early. Like, eleven o’clock at night early. In January.
So one Friday night, Jake Sensenich and I threw a bunch of snacks and sodas and blankets into my parents’ Dodge Aries and drove downtown. We dressed warmly – I even had a black and red ski mask. And we took a large box of heavy metal cassettes to help keep us fired up in the cold dark night. And cold and dark it was. We damn near froze our asses off down there.
It was a long, strange night in downtown Syracuse. A Dodge Aries isn’t very big, so we spent a fair amount of time out wandering around, with frequent trips back to the car to fire up the heater. There were a dozen or so other Metallica die-hards hanging out down there in the wee hours like us, but it wasn’t until the next morning that the line started to swell. And Jake and I were right near the front. Between the two of us we bought around fifteen tickets as I remember – all for the front-row, center-stage (or darn close to center, anyway). At the tender age of 18, it had been my most important, most rewarding mission to date, and I’d accomplished it masterfully. I’d even been the mission commander – it was my first foray into management.
Then all that was left was the waiting and the anticipation. On March 18th, 1989, my buddies and I all headed down to the War Memorial once again – Jake and me, of course, plus Bill, Brian, and Pat. Oh, and Mick Spillane, the guy we knew from Tape World who was supposed to come with us, but sent some barely-dressed bimbo instead. Whatever – his loss. There must have been some other guys there, but I’ll be darned if I can remember who they were. I probably didn’t care – all I wanted was to see Queensrÿche and Metallica live in concert.
The funny thing about Metallica fans is that they’re loyal to the band to the point of being really obnoxious and condescending about it. At some point in the band’s history, the fans had decided that opening acts were crap, and were somehow actively getting in the way of their pure Metallica enjoyment. So it was common practice at Metallica concerts for their more rabid fans – all wearing denim jackets with a Metallica patch emblazoned on the back – to face away from the stage and raise their middle fingers to the opening act. This was fine with me.
You see, my friends and I were just as excited to see Queensrÿche as we were to see Metallica. And we were in the front row. And we knew every lyric to every song by heart. And, as it turns out, we were pretty much the only ones there who gave a damn. When the concert started, we raced the ten feet to the stage and literally threw ourselves into the music, fists pumping, screaming, and absolutely ecstatic with the wonder of the experience.
Our enthusiasm was not lost on the band. Since nobody else there really seemed to want to watch them perform, and whereas we clearly adored them, Queensrÿche shifted their focus from the overall auditorium to the bunch of guys going nuts in the front row. It might as well have been a private concert just for us. It was glorious! And it was literally only the beginning!
Queensrÿche gave an outstanding performance of Operation: Mindcrime, complete with various sound effects and recorded voiceovers to match the grandeur of the album. They did some older stuff, too – the best tunes off their previous couple of albums. I don’t think I’d ever been as happy as I was just then.
It ended, as all things must, and during the intermission my friends and I returned to our front-row seats and raved about how utterly fantastic the show had been thus far. Somebody nearby reported that Queensrÿche was hanging out in some sort of break-room off in the bowels of the War Memorial, but we were all to chicken to go looking for them, as cool as that would have been. We just waited in rapt anticipation for the next show to begin.
Again, we were hardly disappointed. The lights dimmed, and up came the music – the haunting sound of Ennio Morricone’s “Ecstasy of Gold,” the song with which Metallica opened all their concerts. I don’t know why, as they weren’t actually playing it or anything, I guess it was just their thing. Whatever, it was damn cool and we were screaming too loud to hear it, our fists pumping again as we hung over the metal fencing, the crush of thousands more fans pressing at our backs. We could very nearly reach the stage.
The stage onto which Metallica was suddenly revealed with bright lights and flashpots and a gigantic statue of liberty unveiled behind them. Or maybe the statue of liberty came later – I really can’t recall. But what followed was some ninety minutes of ecstasy, not of gold but of two raging guitars, a thrumming bass and a giant drumset banging away in the back. They played virtually all of …And Justice for All, plus a wide array of prior hits including For Whom the Bell Tolls, Sanitarium, Master of Puppets, Am I Evil? and Creeping Death. We knew every chord, every beat, every word backwards and frontwards, and throughout each song we’d unleash a fury of excitement, burning ever last ounce of energy until we were spent. Then, with the opening bars of the next tune, we’d be reinvigorated and start in all over again, cheering and singing and feeling the music reverberate through our skin and bones and to the tip of every last nerve. It was a thrill unlike anything I’d ever felt up to that point in my young life. I came away with a T-shirt that I bought at the merchandise stand, plus a neon-green logo’d guitar pick that I’d caught out of mid-air when James Hetfield tossed it out at me. I also had my hands on one of his sweaty wristbands at one point, but I didn’t want it as badly as the guy who was trying to wrench it away from me and, though it’s not the most manly sentiment I’ve ever expressed… ewww. It was really, really sweaty. I’m a fan, but I’ve got to draw the line somewhere. I was more than satisfied with my pick. I still have it, to this day. Or, rather, my wife has it tucked away, but I’m sure she’d let me see it if I asked. But it’s just a pick, after all. A memento. But mementos are reminders – they serve to help us remember. I don’t need a memento for this – I remember. It was the best concert ever.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
While Reading this Blog, Feel Free to Skip the Commercials
Why TiVo needs to stay around… and probably won’t
I love(d) my TiVos. I’m on my second one, and they’re truly marvelous devices. Sadly, TiVo has been bleeding subscribers lately, losing more than 300,000 subscribers in the quarter ending October, 2009. This isn’t because its service is any less marvelous, it’s because of a couple factors, both relating to the increase in digital television.
I recently upgraded to FIOS, which like most cable TV service today is digitally-based. The challenge with digital delivery is that it MUST be decoded electronically, usually by a converter box of some kind, not just a tuner. With analog services, you could plug a coaxial cable into damn near anything – a TV, a VCR, a TiVo, whatever – and as long as it had a TV-tuner in it, it could translate the signal into TV shows for you. With any sort of digital delivery, that “plug and play” option totally disappears. It doesn’t even matter whether the signal quality is in standard definition or high definition. And it sucks in several key ways. Fear not, I’ll bring this back around to TiVo in just a moment.
The reasons that it sucks include the fact that I now have an additional remote control on my coffee table. None of the remotes are entirely interchangeable, so I need all four of them. That’s right, four. One for my TiVo, one for my Escient Fireball DVD manager, one for my Marantz receiver, and a new one for my fancy-schmantzy digital cable box.
Next reason: I have a fancy-schmantzy digital cable box. I don’t want it, and preferred not to have it, but if I wanted to switch to FIOS (and the cost savings compared to my existing cable/internet/phone service was too significant to pass up), I had to endure the additional piece of equipment on top of all the other components of my entertainment center.
Next reason: the cable box is a gate-keeper for the digital signal, and it’s the only thing that can control what signal goes to my equipment. This means that my TV can’t just choose a channel – it needs to ask the set-top box to select that channel and send it to the TV. The box has turned all of my equipment into beggars. My TiVo, for instance, can ask that the set-top box select a channel, but the set-top box doesn’t know why, and it doesn’t understand that TiVo is trying to record that channel. So if somebody changes the channel manually, suddenly the TiVo isn’t recording what it thought it was recording anymore. It’s becoming increasingly problematic to record things on the TiVo.
Moreover, my Series 2 TiVo used to have dual-tuner capability, but the second tuner won’t work at all with a digital signal, even if the set-top box were smart enough to feed two different channels to the TiVo when instructed. Which it’s not. In fact, the FIOS DVR kind of sucks.
First, I’d like to list the features that I think make the TiVo a wonderful device. Then I’ll bash the FIOS box for its failure to live up to them.
My TiVo has dual tuners that, when functional, was a wonderful feature. You never needed to see a message that “TiVo wants to change the channel to tape some other show right now” because it would just use the other tuner. You never had to worry about whether two shows were on at the same time, or overlapped – the two tuners just handled it. It was really hassle-free.
TiVo also has an incredible capacity. Even the base-model TiVos will record dozens of shows, while the higher-end units, like mine, had hundreds of hours of recording time. I used this, for instance, to record a slew of shows last fall when I was insanely busy at work. In some cases, I recorded entire seasons of shows that I just didn’t have the time or energy to watch. Then I went back and watched them over the summer when there was nothing else on. This was only possible because I had so much spare capacity.
But what was most significant about the TiVo unit was that it worked really well. The interface was intuitive and very easy to navigate. All the information you wanted was at your fingertips, and controlling the playback and recording of shows was effortless.
Now for the FIOS box. It can record a paltry 40 hours of standard-definition programming, and a mere 20 hours of HD. That’s borderline insulting, given the absurdly low cost of hard-disk storage these days. It does have dual tuners, which is nice, but how useful that feature is is severely limited by the recording capacity. And the interface is a pale imitation of TiVo’s beautiful GUI. And, today, I’ve noticed that the controls are sluggish to the point of near-uselessness. What good is it to skip commercials if you overshoot by a minute each time and need to painfully back-track? Worse, even when it’s working right, the FIOS DVR does a lousy job of showing where exactly you are in the playback of a recorded show that is currently being recorded live. For instance, I watch Good Morning America most mornings. During the week, it’s two hours long. I often pause it and leave partway through to practice guitar and get my kids off to school. But when I’m ready to come back, I typically find that the show has inexplicably un-paused itself. With TiVo, knowing that I’d left at 7:45 would be enough to almost immediately return to the point where I left. With the FIOS box, I’m forced to painfully rewind or fast-forward which, even at top-speed, takes several annoying minutes.
But TiVo is screwed, and there isn’t a whole lot they can do about it. The problem is a combination of cost and convenience. Both of those factors favor the cable or FIOS DVR over the TiVo. The cable company’s DVR is built into a set-top box that you need to control your digital cable anyway. There’s no up-front cost to get it, only a monthly fee that’s similar to what you have to pay for TiVo – they’re both around $10-15 a month. So if cost and convenience favor the cable company’s DVR, somebody would have to be awfully motivated to go out and spend an additional $200 or more (possibly much more) to get a TiVo. In fact, the person would have to be made aware, somehow, that TiVo both exists and that it’s far superior to the DVR they’ve been issued by their cable-company. That’s known as fighting an uphill battle on TiVo’s part. And uphill battles, as we know from our military history, are costly. You can win for a while, but attrition will eventually leave your forces too weak to continue the fight.
There are options – both for me and for TiVo – but they’re not pretty. I could buy a different TiVo, at a cost of probably $500 or more for the unit, plus the cost of the subscription (which would be either $13 per month, or $400 for a one-time lifetime subscription). BUT, assuming I could make it work properly, I’d also need to rent a “cablecard” from FIOS for, I think, each tuner in my TiVo. The cablecard is sort of like the guts of the FIOS converter box crunched down into a little compact card that you install inside your TiVo so it can talk directly to the FIOS digital service and make channel-change requests all by itself. Assuming it worked (which I’d need to verify through some research), it would essentially solve all of my problems, but at a significant cost. On top of the TiVo fees, I’d need to rent each cablecard from FIOS for around $4 per month – for a total monthly cost of as much as $17. I’d also be making a gamble that TiVo will stay in business long enough for that unit to wear out and/or pay for itself, because without TiVo Headquarters, all of the “online” functions of a TiVo box are worthless.
TiVo’s options aren’t much better. What they really need is an alliance with Comcast, Time-Warner or Verizon in which they put their far-superior boxes onto the service-provider’s customer’s TVs in place of the crappy DVRs they’re using now. Sadly, there’s no immediate indication that that’s going to happen. They have managed to incorporate some movie-delivery technology into their boxes by partnering with Blockbuster and Netflix, but, let’s face it, both of those companies are in danger as well. Again, the service of digitally delivering movies to the customer’s TV on-demand can be done just as effectively, perhaps moreso, by the cable company.
Or, they need to convince a whole host of new customers that they’re offering something much better than what’s available elsewhere. And this host needs to be not just big, but much bigger than the number of subscribers that are leaving each month because they either like the cost/convenience advantage of the cable box or they’ve grown frustrated that their existing TiVo unit isn’t fully-functional once they’ve upgraded to digital television. Sadly, I may find myself among their number, and it’s a real loss for anyone like me who wants to easily and conveniently control what, when and how they watch television.
I love(d) my TiVos. I’m on my second one, and they’re truly marvelous devices. Sadly, TiVo has been bleeding subscribers lately, losing more than 300,000 subscribers in the quarter ending October, 2009. This isn’t because its service is any less marvelous, it’s because of a couple factors, both relating to the increase in digital television.
I recently upgraded to FIOS, which like most cable TV service today is digitally-based. The challenge with digital delivery is that it MUST be decoded electronically, usually by a converter box of some kind, not just a tuner. With analog services, you could plug a coaxial cable into damn near anything – a TV, a VCR, a TiVo, whatever – and as long as it had a TV-tuner in it, it could translate the signal into TV shows for you. With any sort of digital delivery, that “plug and play” option totally disappears. It doesn’t even matter whether the signal quality is in standard definition or high definition. And it sucks in several key ways. Fear not, I’ll bring this back around to TiVo in just a moment.
The reasons that it sucks include the fact that I now have an additional remote control on my coffee table. None of the remotes are entirely interchangeable, so I need all four of them. That’s right, four. One for my TiVo, one for my Escient Fireball DVD manager, one for my Marantz receiver, and a new one for my fancy-schmantzy digital cable box.
Next reason: I have a fancy-schmantzy digital cable box. I don’t want it, and preferred not to have it, but if I wanted to switch to FIOS (and the cost savings compared to my existing cable/internet/phone service was too significant to pass up), I had to endure the additional piece of equipment on top of all the other components of my entertainment center.
Next reason: the cable box is a gate-keeper for the digital signal, and it’s the only thing that can control what signal goes to my equipment. This means that my TV can’t just choose a channel – it needs to ask the set-top box to select that channel and send it to the TV. The box has turned all of my equipment into beggars. My TiVo, for instance, can ask that the set-top box select a channel, but the set-top box doesn’t know why, and it doesn’t understand that TiVo is trying to record that channel. So if somebody changes the channel manually, suddenly the TiVo isn’t recording what it thought it was recording anymore. It’s becoming increasingly problematic to record things on the TiVo.
Moreover, my Series 2 TiVo used to have dual-tuner capability, but the second tuner won’t work at all with a digital signal, even if the set-top box were smart enough to feed two different channels to the TiVo when instructed. Which it’s not. In fact, the FIOS DVR kind of sucks.
First, I’d like to list the features that I think make the TiVo a wonderful device. Then I’ll bash the FIOS box for its failure to live up to them.
My TiVo has dual tuners that, when functional, was a wonderful feature. You never needed to see a message that “TiVo wants to change the channel to tape some other show right now” because it would just use the other tuner. You never had to worry about whether two shows were on at the same time, or overlapped – the two tuners just handled it. It was really hassle-free.
TiVo also has an incredible capacity. Even the base-model TiVos will record dozens of shows, while the higher-end units, like mine, had hundreds of hours of recording time. I used this, for instance, to record a slew of shows last fall when I was insanely busy at work. In some cases, I recorded entire seasons of shows that I just didn’t have the time or energy to watch. Then I went back and watched them over the summer when there was nothing else on. This was only possible because I had so much spare capacity.
But what was most significant about the TiVo unit was that it worked really well. The interface was intuitive and very easy to navigate. All the information you wanted was at your fingertips, and controlling the playback and recording of shows was effortless.
Now for the FIOS box. It can record a paltry 40 hours of standard-definition programming, and a mere 20 hours of HD. That’s borderline insulting, given the absurdly low cost of hard-disk storage these days. It does have dual tuners, which is nice, but how useful that feature is is severely limited by the recording capacity. And the interface is a pale imitation of TiVo’s beautiful GUI. And, today, I’ve noticed that the controls are sluggish to the point of near-uselessness. What good is it to skip commercials if you overshoot by a minute each time and need to painfully back-track? Worse, even when it’s working right, the FIOS DVR does a lousy job of showing where exactly you are in the playback of a recorded show that is currently being recorded live. For instance, I watch Good Morning America most mornings. During the week, it’s two hours long. I often pause it and leave partway through to practice guitar and get my kids off to school. But when I’m ready to come back, I typically find that the show has inexplicably un-paused itself. With TiVo, knowing that I’d left at 7:45 would be enough to almost immediately return to the point where I left. With the FIOS box, I’m forced to painfully rewind or fast-forward which, even at top-speed, takes several annoying minutes.
But TiVo is screwed, and there isn’t a whole lot they can do about it. The problem is a combination of cost and convenience. Both of those factors favor the cable or FIOS DVR over the TiVo. The cable company’s DVR is built into a set-top box that you need to control your digital cable anyway. There’s no up-front cost to get it, only a monthly fee that’s similar to what you have to pay for TiVo – they’re both around $10-15 a month. So if cost and convenience favor the cable company’s DVR, somebody would have to be awfully motivated to go out and spend an additional $200 or more (possibly much more) to get a TiVo. In fact, the person would have to be made aware, somehow, that TiVo both exists and that it’s far superior to the DVR they’ve been issued by their cable-company. That’s known as fighting an uphill battle on TiVo’s part. And uphill battles, as we know from our military history, are costly. You can win for a while, but attrition will eventually leave your forces too weak to continue the fight.
There are options – both for me and for TiVo – but they’re not pretty. I could buy a different TiVo, at a cost of probably $500 or more for the unit, plus the cost of the subscription (which would be either $13 per month, or $400 for a one-time lifetime subscription). BUT, assuming I could make it work properly, I’d also need to rent a “cablecard” from FIOS for, I think, each tuner in my TiVo. The cablecard is sort of like the guts of the FIOS converter box crunched down into a little compact card that you install inside your TiVo so it can talk directly to the FIOS digital service and make channel-change requests all by itself. Assuming it worked (which I’d need to verify through some research), it would essentially solve all of my problems, but at a significant cost. On top of the TiVo fees, I’d need to rent each cablecard from FIOS for around $4 per month – for a total monthly cost of as much as $17. I’d also be making a gamble that TiVo will stay in business long enough for that unit to wear out and/or pay for itself, because without TiVo Headquarters, all of the “online” functions of a TiVo box are worthless.
TiVo’s options aren’t much better. What they really need is an alliance with Comcast, Time-Warner or Verizon in which they put their far-superior boxes onto the service-provider’s customer’s TVs in place of the crappy DVRs they’re using now. Sadly, there’s no immediate indication that that’s going to happen. They have managed to incorporate some movie-delivery technology into their boxes by partnering with Blockbuster and Netflix, but, let’s face it, both of those companies are in danger as well. Again, the service of digitally delivering movies to the customer’s TV on-demand can be done just as effectively, perhaps moreso, by the cable company.
Or, they need to convince a whole host of new customers that they’re offering something much better than what’s available elsewhere. And this host needs to be not just big, but much bigger than the number of subscribers that are leaving each month because they either like the cost/convenience advantage of the cable box or they’ve grown frustrated that their existing TiVo unit isn’t fully-functional once they’ve upgraded to digital television. Sadly, I may find myself among their number, and it’s a real loss for anyone like me who wants to easily and conveniently control what, when and how they watch television.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
My Windows 7 Upgrade – Part 3
Like looking through glass
Bear in mind that I never really used Windows Vista, which also had some pretty features that I am now seeing for the first time in Windows 7. With that in mind, I find that I like Windows 7 very much.
For starters, the Start menu and the taskbar have continued to evolve. The Start Menu now, in many ways, provides access to the key areas of the O/S that was once distributed between the Desktop, Windows Explorer, and the Windows Search feature. The taskbar has blended together its traditional function of displaying which applications are running, with that of the Quick-launch Toolbar that provides one-click access to programs that you use all the time. The combined functionality relies on some large-ish icons, some of which (the icons designated for Quick-launch) are always present, while others (those representing open windows or software) appear as needed. All of them get a somewhat vague translucent highlight around them to indicate applications that are currently running, and they get an orange highlight when they need the user’s attention. It all sounds a bit clumsy when you read it, but it really works quite well. See the pic below for a sample of a taskbar with the Windows “Start” button at the left, and a bunch of application icons arrayed to the right of it.
On the right side of the taskbar, we’re used to seeing the clock and the icons of the System Tray. They’re still there, but now they have a pop-up box when you want to see them all, and I find it more useful than the little arrow you could use to expand the system tray when a desired icon was hidden. But the new-fangled System Tray hides an even more powerful tool, and it’s so sleek and unassuming that you might very well miss it. It’s a simple vertical bar, the same height as the taskbar and quite narrow. You’d miss it entirely except for some frosted shading at the corners. But if your screen gets all cluttered with open windows and applications and you just want to see your pretty desktop background again, simply hover over the bar with your mouse and all of your open windows instantly become transparent boxes with thin outlines to show where they were. I honestly haven’t figured out a meaningful use for this capability as of yet, but it certainly looks impressive. If it’s useful functionality that you’d prefer, a simple click of that same vertical bar serves to minimize everything to the task bar, fully revealing the desktop. This is no different than the old button that used to sit on the Quick Launch Toolbar and do the same thing, but if nothing else it’s prettier. In the picture below, you're looking at the desktop THROUGH my open Microsoft Word window.
Windows 7 also adds a useful capability for creating a secure home network. If you’ve ever wondered whether you were putting your personal data at risk by enabling “sharing” of files, folders and printers on your home computers, you’ll appreciate the new “Homegroup” feature. Any given Windows 7 computer on your network is able to create a Homegroup password, that you then enter into any other Windows 7 PCs on your home network. They can then access whatever files you want them to from the various storage areas for Music, Video, Documents, and so on. Printers can be shared in this manner as well, and the password (which is case-sensitive) gives it a level of security that should ensure that your files are kept private.
Another feature of Windows 7 that I found very useful was the updated task manager and resource monitor. It works (and looks) very similar to past versions, but includes a breakdown of the services that are running and how much RAM each of them is using. Better still, it includes a button to launch the “Resource Manager,” which is a very similar tool except that it gives an even more detailed breakdown of CPU utilization, RAM usage, Disk activity and network throughput – including the ability to designate one or more individual programs to monitor. This is a wonderful tool that normally you’d have had to download from some 3rd-party.
But the improvements in Windows 7 are both great and small. They thought to include a very handy utility called the “Snip tool” that lets you select and copy graphics or text from any portion of the screen, then paste it into a document or even save it as graphics file. I confess that before I started working on my book and using OneNote in its full, glorious capacity, I still made great use if its’ ability to perform this same function – and now it’s included for free. Similarly, Windows 7 includes a tool that creates digital Post-it™ notes on the desktop so you can quickly scrawl messages to yourself. It’s not an especially remarkable tool, but it’s nice that it’s built right into the O/S. Add in the desktop gadget capability carried over from Vista and you’ve got a tremendous amount of power to make your desktop more than just a pretty picture – it’s a really dramatic and notable improvement over Windows XP. Heck, even the calculator’s been beefed up. And, of course, the Aero Glass visual effects look every bit as snazzy as they did in Vista.
It’s a shame that Microsoft took so many years and two tries to get a desktop operating system that works as well as Windows 7. In fact, even Windows 7 doesn’t include all of the features originally planned for “Longhorn” back in the early 2000s, such as the improved file system. But it’s a solid, stable, elegant operating system that is really an evolution from Windows XP. It does what an O/S ought to do – it enables you to get your work done while keeping out of your way as much as possible. It gives me new hope that Microsoft actually knows what the hell they’re doing, and helps me to believe that future versions of Windows may continue to blur the lines between the user and the computer, with the ultimate goal (in my mind, anyway) being a way to access your data and do your work without really thinking about how you’re doing it. Windows 7 nudges the bar in that direction.
Bear in mind that I never really used Windows Vista, which also had some pretty features that I am now seeing for the first time in Windows 7. With that in mind, I find that I like Windows 7 very much.
For starters, the Start menu and the taskbar have continued to evolve. The Start Menu now, in many ways, provides access to the key areas of the O/S that was once distributed between the Desktop, Windows Explorer, and the Windows Search feature. The taskbar has blended together its traditional function of displaying which applications are running, with that of the Quick-launch Toolbar that provides one-click access to programs that you use all the time. The combined functionality relies on some large-ish icons, some of which (the icons designated for Quick-launch) are always present, while others (those representing open windows or software) appear as needed. All of them get a somewhat vague translucent highlight around them to indicate applications that are currently running, and they get an orange highlight when they need the user’s attention. It all sounds a bit clumsy when you read it, but it really works quite well. See the pic below for a sample of a taskbar with the Windows “Start” button at the left, and a bunch of application icons arrayed to the right of it.
On the right side of the taskbar, we’re used to seeing the clock and the icons of the System Tray. They’re still there, but now they have a pop-up box when you want to see them all, and I find it more useful than the little arrow you could use to expand the system tray when a desired icon was hidden. But the new-fangled System Tray hides an even more powerful tool, and it’s so sleek and unassuming that you might very well miss it. It’s a simple vertical bar, the same height as the taskbar and quite narrow. You’d miss it entirely except for some frosted shading at the corners. But if your screen gets all cluttered with open windows and applications and you just want to see your pretty desktop background again, simply hover over the bar with your mouse and all of your open windows instantly become transparent boxes with thin outlines to show where they were. I honestly haven’t figured out a meaningful use for this capability as of yet, but it certainly looks impressive. If it’s useful functionality that you’d prefer, a simple click of that same vertical bar serves to minimize everything to the task bar, fully revealing the desktop. This is no different than the old button that used to sit on the Quick Launch Toolbar and do the same thing, but if nothing else it’s prettier. In the picture below, you're looking at the desktop THROUGH my open Microsoft Word window.
Windows 7 also adds a useful capability for creating a secure home network. If you’ve ever wondered whether you were putting your personal data at risk by enabling “sharing” of files, folders and printers on your home computers, you’ll appreciate the new “Homegroup” feature. Any given Windows 7 computer on your network is able to create a Homegroup password, that you then enter into any other Windows 7 PCs on your home network. They can then access whatever files you want them to from the various storage areas for Music, Video, Documents, and so on. Printers can be shared in this manner as well, and the password (which is case-sensitive) gives it a level of security that should ensure that your files are kept private.
Another feature of Windows 7 that I found very useful was the updated task manager and resource monitor. It works (and looks) very similar to past versions, but includes a breakdown of the services that are running and how much RAM each of them is using. Better still, it includes a button to launch the “Resource Manager,” which is a very similar tool except that it gives an even more detailed breakdown of CPU utilization, RAM usage, Disk activity and network throughput – including the ability to designate one or more individual programs to monitor. This is a wonderful tool that normally you’d have had to download from some 3rd-party.
But the improvements in Windows 7 are both great and small. They thought to include a very handy utility called the “Snip tool” that lets you select and copy graphics or text from any portion of the screen, then paste it into a document or even save it as graphics file. I confess that before I started working on my book and using OneNote in its full, glorious capacity, I still made great use if its’ ability to perform this same function – and now it’s included for free. Similarly, Windows 7 includes a tool that creates digital Post-it™ notes on the desktop so you can quickly scrawl messages to yourself. It’s not an especially remarkable tool, but it’s nice that it’s built right into the O/S. Add in the desktop gadget capability carried over from Vista and you’ve got a tremendous amount of power to make your desktop more than just a pretty picture – it’s a really dramatic and notable improvement over Windows XP. Heck, even the calculator’s been beefed up. And, of course, the Aero Glass visual effects look every bit as snazzy as they did in Vista.
It’s a shame that Microsoft took so many years and two tries to get a desktop operating system that works as well as Windows 7. In fact, even Windows 7 doesn’t include all of the features originally planned for “Longhorn” back in the early 2000s, such as the improved file system. But it’s a solid, stable, elegant operating system that is really an evolution from Windows XP. It does what an O/S ought to do – it enables you to get your work done while keeping out of your way as much as possible. It gives me new hope that Microsoft actually knows what the hell they’re doing, and helps me to believe that future versions of Windows may continue to blur the lines between the user and the computer, with the ultimate goal (in my mind, anyway) being a way to access your data and do your work without really thinking about how you’re doing it. Windows 7 nudges the bar in that direction.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Blood, Sweat & Tears (now with more blood!)
A writing update
Today was the most productive day I've had in quite some time. I got nothing at all done on Sunday and very little done on Monday, but today almost made up for it. Woo! Feels good!
My success was not without a cost, however. I have now shed blood for my art. It's true - as I was flipping pages in my notepad, it gave me a big, honkin' paper cut! It bled and everything! I tried to put a band-aid on it, but it made my finger too stiff and I couldn't type, so infection and pain be damned I ripped it off!
Hmm. I wonder where I left it?
Even in spite of my grievous wound, I went on to not only consolidate several Word documents full of story notes for my primary novel, but I devoured the remaining handwritten notes in that notepad and put it out to pasture. I suspect it knew that was coming and bit me out of fear of being abandoned.
So I now have only one partially-full notepad to transcribe, plus a single word document full of notes that I need to copy and paste into my OneNote notebook. Once that's finished, I ought to be able to devote the bulk of my time to writing new material and only a small chunk of it on research and rumination. And hopefully even less time bleeding.
Today was the most productive day I've had in quite some time. I got nothing at all done on Sunday and very little done on Monday, but today almost made up for it. Woo! Feels good!
My success was not without a cost, however. I have now shed blood for my art. It's true - as I was flipping pages in my notepad, it gave me a big, honkin' paper cut! It bled and everything! I tried to put a band-aid on it, but it made my finger too stiff and I couldn't type, so infection and pain be damned I ripped it off!
Hmm. I wonder where I left it?
Even in spite of my grievous wound, I went on to not only consolidate several Word documents full of story notes for my primary novel, but I devoured the remaining handwritten notes in that notepad and put it out to pasture. I suspect it knew that was coming and bit me out of fear of being abandoned.
So I now have only one partially-full notepad to transcribe, plus a single word document full of notes that I need to copy and paste into my OneNote notebook. Once that's finished, I ought to be able to devote the bulk of my time to writing new material and only a small chunk of it on research and rumination. And hopefully even less time bleeding.
My Windows 7 Upgrade – Part 2
The death of Batman
In yesterday’s blog I told the tale of my Windows 7 upgrade, beginning with why I felt it made sense to mess with my Operating System and continuing to the point where I actually executed the Windows 7 install process. One reason for the upgrade that I didn’t mention – my new computer in my office came with Windows 7 and I’ve used it just enough to conclude that I like it. That certainly helped push me in the direction of the new O/S.
The XP to 7 upgrade, I had read (and been told by the Mac commercials), was a total wipe and reload. Which was fine, because that’s really what I wanted – a clean slate. I had moved my Windows 7 digital download onto a flash drive, and executed the install by running the setup.exe. That’s practically the last thing I had to do until the upgrade was complete.
It asked me to make a choice between a simple upgrade and a total wipe, which I thought was odd because I was pretty sure that a simple upgrade wasn’t actually an option. I suppose I should have selected that choice just to see what happened, but I didn’t think of it at the time. Instead, I told it to go ahead and blow away XP. I selected my desired drive volume, entered my CD-Key, and then walked away. The rest of the upgrade, including reboots and post-reboot activities, proceeded entirely without me. I admit, I was very impressed. It was the cleanest, friendliest Windows install I can remember. It gave me a really positive vibe that, for the first time in years, Microsoft had gotten it right.
It wasn’t perfect, though. One thing I noticed after spending some time moving my data back over to my main hard drive was that there seemed to be a lot of crapola that I hadn’t expected to see. The installation process had advised me that my old Windows directory would be renamed Windows.old and would still be hanging around in case I needed it, however it appeared that much of my “Program Files” folder and various folders on the root of the C:\ drive were there also. The setup application had never specifically promised me a complete wipe and reload of my drive, so it was my own fault for assuming that I was getting a Format C: when it appears all that really happened was a rename of the Windows directory.
The good news is that, functionally, the end result was the same for me – I got a fresh install of Windows 7 with none of the old Windows XP registry or system files hanging around to mess things up. I might have preferred to have blown away the whole C:\ drive and reloaded everything from scratch, since it’s plausible that there could be a conflict at some point down the road between a new application being installed and some old debris still cluttering up the “Program Files” directory, but I consider that to be unlikely enough that I’m not going to bother doing yet another re-install.
One other wrench in the works involved the game that I’m currently playing – Batman: Arkham Asylum. I had found the “saves” folder and backed that up, believing that it, in fact, contained my saves. I don’t know why I expected the “saves” folder to contain saves, but being kind of a crazy, wacky guy, that’s what I thought. Well, it didn’t. I don’t know what the teensy little file in there was for, but when restored to the Saves directory after reinstalling the game, it did not grant me access to my saved game. I am now replaying Batmat: Arkham Asylum from the beginning.
There were other little oddities, just to show that Microsoft still has some work to do to get to a completely hands-free, pain-free install. I have an HP Color Laserjet 2600n printer. The “n” stands for network, which means that I can plug it directly into my home network and it will take an IP address and make itself available to any PC that’s also on the network. It’s also cheap as hell to print on compared to those damn inkjets I used to use.
When I set up my Windows 7 PC in my office, I told it the IP address of the printer and it found it with no problems. It grabbed the driver out of Windows 7’s list of available drivers and it set it up as my primary printer, pretty much hassle-free.
My experience with my upgrade was not analogous to that. In fact, when I gave the IP address to my primary PC, it told me it didn’t have the driver for that printer and made me go find it on the web. Huh? I know the driver’s built into Windows 7, because I already added this exact printer on another Windows 7 machine. Ok, fine – off I went to HP’s website to download the driver. Now, remember, this is a 2600n, and the n stands for “network.” But what’s the ONLY Windows 7 driver I can find for that printer on HP’s site? A driver that requires me to plug in the printer via a USB cable! Huh again?? That doesn’t even begin to make sense. But, AH-HA! Since the Windows 7 setup didn’t format my hard drive, the OLD driver I used to use is still there – I’ll just point to that. So I ran the “add printer” wizard a second time, told it the printer’s address, and prepared to point it to the old driver. Except this time, just to mess with me, Windows 7 found the proper driver on its own (like it should have the first time) and set the printer up nice and neat.
But in fairly short order, and with the only issues being relatively minor (and the Batman issue being, ultimately, my fault. Or the game-maker’s fault. Either way, it wasn’t Microsoft’s fault.), I had my new Windows 7 environment up and running. It was quick and clean and very slick. I was glad I made the change.
However…
The reload did not fix my Firefox problem. I can only conclude that Firefox objects to one of the 18 or so tabs that I have open simultaneously. It used to be 20, but I’ve closed a couple in an attempt to find a root cause. In theory, I believe Firefox should have no problem with all these tabs, even though it seems like a lot (even to me). I’m pretty sure that just one of the websites I have open must have some bad code on it somewhere that’s causing a memory leak or otherwise giving Firefox a lobotomy at random intervals. Regardless, the upgrade did not correct this problem as I’d hoped. The good news, however, is that it DID fix the problem I had with that borked .msi install that had refused to complete and was preventing any OTHER setup files from working.
One thing was missing, though. My computer in my office came with this great little “dock” across the top of the screen from which I could quickly launch various applications, and it even had sub-menus of applications (like all the Office apps, for example). It’s a very nice feature, sort of similar to the fancy toolbar/dock thingie on a Mac, and I hunted high and low to figure out how to turn it on on my main PC. In the process, I discovered all sorts of features of my new Windows 7 system, such as a neat tool that “evaluates” all the hardware on your machine and gives you a score that indicates how many of the fancy features you ought to have turned on. For example, Windows 7 comes with the “aero glass” interface, just like Vista had. It turns things like the Title Bar at the top of a window and the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen transparent – you can see through them to the stuff underneath. It looks really neat, but it’s not recommended for systems with too little RAM or a slow processor – it will slow them down too much.
Anyway, I hunted and I hunted and I hunted, and finally I went down to my office and fired up my computer there. A little examination of the doc revealed that it wasn’t a Microsoft product – it had been added by DELL! I’ll be darned! said I. Luckily, the company that wrote the app for DELL had left their name on the copyright screen, so I was able to discover the very nice Stardock Objectdock software, which is a free utility that does exactly the same thing as the DELL dock did for me. It’s actually even more powerful than the free DELL one, in terms of how you can customize it and configure it.
With that mystery solved, I was off to discover more neat tricks with Windows 7.
In yesterday’s blog I told the tale of my Windows 7 upgrade, beginning with why I felt it made sense to mess with my Operating System and continuing to the point where I actually executed the Windows 7 install process. One reason for the upgrade that I didn’t mention – my new computer in my office came with Windows 7 and I’ve used it just enough to conclude that I like it. That certainly helped push me in the direction of the new O/S.
The XP to 7 upgrade, I had read (and been told by the Mac commercials), was a total wipe and reload. Which was fine, because that’s really what I wanted – a clean slate. I had moved my Windows 7 digital download onto a flash drive, and executed the install by running the setup.exe. That’s practically the last thing I had to do until the upgrade was complete.
It asked me to make a choice between a simple upgrade and a total wipe, which I thought was odd because I was pretty sure that a simple upgrade wasn’t actually an option. I suppose I should have selected that choice just to see what happened, but I didn’t think of it at the time. Instead, I told it to go ahead and blow away XP. I selected my desired drive volume, entered my CD-Key, and then walked away. The rest of the upgrade, including reboots and post-reboot activities, proceeded entirely without me. I admit, I was very impressed. It was the cleanest, friendliest Windows install I can remember. It gave me a really positive vibe that, for the first time in years, Microsoft had gotten it right.
It wasn’t perfect, though. One thing I noticed after spending some time moving my data back over to my main hard drive was that there seemed to be a lot of crapola that I hadn’t expected to see. The installation process had advised me that my old Windows directory would be renamed Windows.old and would still be hanging around in case I needed it, however it appeared that much of my “Program Files” folder and various folders on the root of the C:\ drive were there also. The setup application had never specifically promised me a complete wipe and reload of my drive, so it was my own fault for assuming that I was getting a Format C: when it appears all that really happened was a rename of the Windows directory.
The good news is that, functionally, the end result was the same for me – I got a fresh install of Windows 7 with none of the old Windows XP registry or system files hanging around to mess things up. I might have preferred to have blown away the whole C:\ drive and reloaded everything from scratch, since it’s plausible that there could be a conflict at some point down the road between a new application being installed and some old debris still cluttering up the “Program Files” directory, but I consider that to be unlikely enough that I’m not going to bother doing yet another re-install.
One other wrench in the works involved the game that I’m currently playing – Batman: Arkham Asylum. I had found the “saves” folder and backed that up, believing that it, in fact, contained my saves. I don’t know why I expected the “saves” folder to contain saves, but being kind of a crazy, wacky guy, that’s what I thought. Well, it didn’t. I don’t know what the teensy little file in there was for, but when restored to the Saves directory after reinstalling the game, it did not grant me access to my saved game. I am now replaying Batmat: Arkham Asylum from the beginning.
There were other little oddities, just to show that Microsoft still has some work to do to get to a completely hands-free, pain-free install. I have an HP Color Laserjet 2600n printer. The “n” stands for network, which means that I can plug it directly into my home network and it will take an IP address and make itself available to any PC that’s also on the network. It’s also cheap as hell to print on compared to those damn inkjets I used to use.
When I set up my Windows 7 PC in my office, I told it the IP address of the printer and it found it with no problems. It grabbed the driver out of Windows 7’s list of available drivers and it set it up as my primary printer, pretty much hassle-free.
My experience with my upgrade was not analogous to that. In fact, when I gave the IP address to my primary PC, it told me it didn’t have the driver for that printer and made me go find it on the web. Huh? I know the driver’s built into Windows 7, because I already added this exact printer on another Windows 7 machine. Ok, fine – off I went to HP’s website to download the driver. Now, remember, this is a 2600n, and the n stands for “network.” But what’s the ONLY Windows 7 driver I can find for that printer on HP’s site? A driver that requires me to plug in the printer via a USB cable! Huh again?? That doesn’t even begin to make sense. But, AH-HA! Since the Windows 7 setup didn’t format my hard drive, the OLD driver I used to use is still there – I’ll just point to that. So I ran the “add printer” wizard a second time, told it the printer’s address, and prepared to point it to the old driver. Except this time, just to mess with me, Windows 7 found the proper driver on its own (like it should have the first time) and set the printer up nice and neat.
But in fairly short order, and with the only issues being relatively minor (and the Batman issue being, ultimately, my fault. Or the game-maker’s fault. Either way, it wasn’t Microsoft’s fault.), I had my new Windows 7 environment up and running. It was quick and clean and very slick. I was glad I made the change.
However…
The reload did not fix my Firefox problem. I can only conclude that Firefox objects to one of the 18 or so tabs that I have open simultaneously. It used to be 20, but I’ve closed a couple in an attempt to find a root cause. In theory, I believe Firefox should have no problem with all these tabs, even though it seems like a lot (even to me). I’m pretty sure that just one of the websites I have open must have some bad code on it somewhere that’s causing a memory leak or otherwise giving Firefox a lobotomy at random intervals. Regardless, the upgrade did not correct this problem as I’d hoped. The good news, however, is that it DID fix the problem I had with that borked .msi install that had refused to complete and was preventing any OTHER setup files from working.
One thing was missing, though. My computer in my office came with this great little “dock” across the top of the screen from which I could quickly launch various applications, and it even had sub-menus of applications (like all the Office apps, for example). It’s a very nice feature, sort of similar to the fancy toolbar/dock thingie on a Mac, and I hunted high and low to figure out how to turn it on on my main PC. In the process, I discovered all sorts of features of my new Windows 7 system, such as a neat tool that “evaluates” all the hardware on your machine and gives you a score that indicates how many of the fancy features you ought to have turned on. For example, Windows 7 comes with the “aero glass” interface, just like Vista had. It turns things like the Title Bar at the top of a window and the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen transparent – you can see through them to the stuff underneath. It looks really neat, but it’s not recommended for systems with too little RAM or a slow processor – it will slow them down too much.
Anyway, I hunted and I hunted and I hunted, and finally I went down to my office and fired up my computer there. A little examination of the doc revealed that it wasn’t a Microsoft product – it had been added by DELL! I’ll be darned! said I. Luckily, the company that wrote the app for DELL had left their name on the copyright screen, so I was able to discover the very nice Stardock Objectdock software, which is a free utility that does exactly the same thing as the DELL dock did for me. It’s actually even more powerful than the free DELL one, in terms of how you can customize it and configure it.
With that mystery solved, I was off to discover more neat tricks with Windows 7.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Seventh Time(?)’s the Charm
My Windows Upgrade
I upgraded to Windows 7 Professional Saturday on my primary PC – a DELL XPS box that’s a couple of years old and came with Windows XP Professional. This new O/S has been much in the news for the last month since it was released at the end of October, so I thought I’d share my experience and my thoughts now that I’ve been putting it through its paces for a couple of days.
First off, calling it Windows 7 seems a bit disingenuous. By almost any count, except Microsoft’s I suppose, there have been a lot more than seven versions of Windows. Let’s count:
So, even if we all pretend that Windows Millennium never existed (which I’d wholeheartedly endorse), the count’s still off by at least one version. If Microsoft had released it a year sooner, I guess they could have said that it had been seven years since the last release that didn’t turn out to be an embarrassment (Windows XP), but they didn’t so it wasn’t. A cursory didn’t turn up a good explanation for how Microsoft decided on this name, so let’s just chalk it up to Marketing and move on.
What’s really significant about Windows 7 is that is has been universally hailed as an improvement over Windows Vista AND Windows XP. This differentiates it from Vista, which many did not enthusiastically embrace as a step up from Windows XP.
My experience with Vista is pretty limited. My wife’s computer came loaded with Vista, but I never really used her computer. In fact, the only times I really sat down at it was when she’d bellow down that “This stupid computer’s not working right. I hate it!” I’d then have to figure out not only what was broken, but I’d have to do it while hobbled by an O/S I didn’t know. I never did manage to figure out why a standard Microsoft USB mouse occasionally locks up on her machine, and it still does to this day.
I should mention that I didn’t really have a burning need to upgrade to Windows 7 on this computer. My decision to do so was based on a combination of factors. First, I had a copy of the software and it wasn’t really earning its keep just sitting there gathering dust. That was a big incentive to upgrade. Second, I felt I needed to reinstall Windows on my computer and figured if I was going to bother, I might as well upgrade at the same time.
Why did I need to reinstall? Well, I can’t speak to Windows 7 yet, nor vista, but with every previous version of Windows from 95 through XP, it was generally a good idea to wipe the Operating System and reload it every couple of years to thoroughly clean out any electronic debris cluttering up the registry among other places. In my case, I was also suffering from a condition where Firefox would run well when first launched, but within an hour or so would be running very slowly unless I closed and re-launched it. Cleaning out and reinstalling Firefox didn’t help, but it was really affecting the quality of my computing life, so it needed to be fixed. Also, I had tried to install a Microsoft XPS reader (that I suspect I didn’t really need) and it hung without completing, leaving me in a limbo where no OTHER software using the Microsoft .msi installer could install anything. That was the proverbial final straw, and I decided that my computer needed a fresh start.
And so began my upgrade adventure.
I started with an electronic version of Windows 7 that I had purchased, downloaded and copied to a flash drive. I’d never bought an operating system like this before, so this whole escapade was a real departure right from the outset.
I carefully backed up my critical files to an external hard drive and made a checklist in Word to make sure that I neither forgot to save anything nor forgot to reload it later on. I also copied and pasted over all of my open windows from Firefox, which really made it easy to launch them again later on – a simple click on each of them brought the desired website right up for me.
Note that this was not an onerous task for me. I’m pretty good about how I store my files these days – everything pretty much goes into “My Documents,” with the occasional exception of stuff that’s right on my desktop, and the few files, like my IE Favorites and my Firefox Bookmarks, that are stored elsewhere by design. The Macintosh commercials play up all the people with their “boxes of stuff” who are making the move from PC to Mac since they need to move all their “stuff” anyway. I call this wishful thinking on Apple’s part, but you can’t blame a guy for trying. Anyway, it took me a few hours primarily because I was very careful and thorough and because I wasn’t in a huge hurry. I also took the time to prune and archive and generally review my documents – some of which go back more than 15 years and were originally created in DOS-based versions of Word, if you can believe that.
Once that time-consuming but useful process was complete, I disconnected that external hard disk to ensure that anything that might go berserk on my PC couldn’t destroy the backup. If I were really worried, I’d have made a DVD backup of my backup (and, honestly I probably should have done so – I’d certainly have recommended it to anyone who came to me for advice. But you know what they say about doctors being the worst patients – it applies to IT guys as well), but I didn’t. Actually, I have quite a lot of stuff on that hard drive right now – I really do need to back it up sometime.
Anyway, the next several steps were refreshingly simple. The short version – my Windows 7 upgrade went as smoothly as any O/S upgrade I’ve performed in my 30 years using computers. For the long version, come on back for tomorrow’s blog.
I upgraded to Windows 7 Professional Saturday on my primary PC – a DELL XPS box that’s a couple of years old and came with Windows XP Professional. This new O/S has been much in the news for the last month since it was released at the end of October, so I thought I’d share my experience and my thoughts now that I’ve been putting it through its paces for a couple of days.
First off, calling it Windows 7 seems a bit disingenuous. By almost any count, except Microsoft’s I suppose, there have been a lot more than seven versions of Windows. Let’s count:
- Windows 1.x – 3.1 and 3.11 – let’s be generous and call this one version, though it wasn’t (in fact, Windows 1 looked almost nothing like Windows 3.x.).
- Windows 95a and 95b
- Windows NT 3.1, 3.5 and 4.0 (again, counting these as one is quite a stretch on my part, since NT 3.x looked like you were using Windows 3.x, whereas NT 4.0 looked like Windows 95. They certainly weren’t interchangeable.)
- Windows 98 and 98 Second Edition (SE) – prior to XP, this was the greatest O/S I ever used. I could make Windows 98 SE dance a jig, sing a song, and juggle flaming axes. All at the same time, if needed.
- Windows Millennium (Me) – let us never speak of it again.
- Windows 2000
- Windows XP
- Windows Vista
- Windows “7”
So, even if we all pretend that Windows Millennium never existed (which I’d wholeheartedly endorse), the count’s still off by at least one version. If Microsoft had released it a year sooner, I guess they could have said that it had been seven years since the last release that didn’t turn out to be an embarrassment (Windows XP), but they didn’t so it wasn’t. A cursory didn’t turn up a good explanation for how Microsoft decided on this name, so let’s just chalk it up to Marketing and move on.
What’s really significant about Windows 7 is that is has been universally hailed as an improvement over Windows Vista AND Windows XP. This differentiates it from Vista, which many did not enthusiastically embrace as a step up from Windows XP.
My experience with Vista is pretty limited. My wife’s computer came loaded with Vista, but I never really used her computer. In fact, the only times I really sat down at it was when she’d bellow down that “This stupid computer’s not working right. I hate it!” I’d then have to figure out not only what was broken, but I’d have to do it while hobbled by an O/S I didn’t know. I never did manage to figure out why a standard Microsoft USB mouse occasionally locks up on her machine, and it still does to this day.
I should mention that I didn’t really have a burning need to upgrade to Windows 7 on this computer. My decision to do so was based on a combination of factors. First, I had a copy of the software and it wasn’t really earning its keep just sitting there gathering dust. That was a big incentive to upgrade. Second, I felt I needed to reinstall Windows on my computer and figured if I was going to bother, I might as well upgrade at the same time.
Why did I need to reinstall? Well, I can’t speak to Windows 7 yet, nor vista, but with every previous version of Windows from 95 through XP, it was generally a good idea to wipe the Operating System and reload it every couple of years to thoroughly clean out any electronic debris cluttering up the registry among other places. In my case, I was also suffering from a condition where Firefox would run well when first launched, but within an hour or so would be running very slowly unless I closed and re-launched it. Cleaning out and reinstalling Firefox didn’t help, but it was really affecting the quality of my computing life, so it needed to be fixed. Also, I had tried to install a Microsoft XPS reader (that I suspect I didn’t really need) and it hung without completing, leaving me in a limbo where no OTHER software using the Microsoft .msi installer could install anything. That was the proverbial final straw, and I decided that my computer needed a fresh start.
And so began my upgrade adventure.
I started with an electronic version of Windows 7 that I had purchased, downloaded and copied to a flash drive. I’d never bought an operating system like this before, so this whole escapade was a real departure right from the outset.
I carefully backed up my critical files to an external hard drive and made a checklist in Word to make sure that I neither forgot to save anything nor forgot to reload it later on. I also copied and pasted over all of my open windows from Firefox, which really made it easy to launch them again later on – a simple click on each of them brought the desired website right up for me.
Note that this was not an onerous task for me. I’m pretty good about how I store my files these days – everything pretty much goes into “My Documents,” with the occasional exception of stuff that’s right on my desktop, and the few files, like my IE Favorites and my Firefox Bookmarks, that are stored elsewhere by design. The Macintosh commercials play up all the people with their “boxes of stuff” who are making the move from PC to Mac since they need to move all their “stuff” anyway. I call this wishful thinking on Apple’s part, but you can’t blame a guy for trying. Anyway, it took me a few hours primarily because I was very careful and thorough and because I wasn’t in a huge hurry. I also took the time to prune and archive and generally review my documents – some of which go back more than 15 years and were originally created in DOS-based versions of Word, if you can believe that.
Once that time-consuming but useful process was complete, I disconnected that external hard disk to ensure that anything that might go berserk on my PC couldn’t destroy the backup. If I were really worried, I’d have made a DVD backup of my backup (and, honestly I probably should have done so – I’d certainly have recommended it to anyone who came to me for advice. But you know what they say about doctors being the worst patients – it applies to IT guys as well), but I didn’t. Actually, I have quite a lot of stuff on that hard drive right now – I really do need to back it up sometime.
Anyway, the next several steps were refreshingly simple. The short version – my Windows 7 upgrade went as smoothly as any O/S upgrade I’ve performed in my 30 years using computers. For the long version, come on back for tomorrow’s blog.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
How to Work for Hours and Feel Like You've Accomplished Nothing
A Novel-writing Status
Now that I'm fully engaged in my book(s), I may occasionally make additional brief updates like this one at odd times and possibly even on weekends.
Yesterday (Friday, December 4th) felt like a waste, and by bedtime I was extremely grumpy. I didn't even open my "chapter" Word documents, and thus added no real prose to my novel. Nor did I copy so much as one line of notes from my handwritten notepad into my OneNote repository.
Which isn't to say that I didn't accomplish anything of value. It just didn't feel like I was making progress the way it does when I write creative content or at least copy over the notes that I need to transcribe in support of writing that content.
What I did, instead, was spend around six hours poring over Google Maps and Wikipedia to research some fairly important information for the setting of my novel. There are at least two significant population centers to be visited in my first book, and I had had some general ideas about them, including:
Also, for reasons that will be clear when and if you ever read this novel, I needed to know what military installations exist in those same regions of the country and (if possible) have a general idea of the numbers and types of material and personnel at each of them.
The result of all of these needs? Yesterday's research-a-rama. Hours upon hours of following links on Wikipedia, then blasting out from them to Google Maps. The result? Well, I now have a OneNote Tab titled "Research" on which I've copied and pasted links to Wiki articles as well as the names and rough locations of several dozen US military bases. In addition to that rather simplistic (if very time-consuming) research, I got some good news and some bad news:
The Bad News: I discovered that the two places I'd intended to set some important chunks of my book were totally unsuitable relative to each other. Crap. In the context of my work, having two important communities exist 700 miles apart is totally unworkable. I was able to brainstorm some solutions that made it work, one of which I liked enough that thematically I may very well end up using it anyway, but they were "fixes" for a problem that I needed to be smart and clever enough to accept ought to be avoided altogether. Hooray for being smart and clever, I suppose.
The Good News: I actually found a new location for one of the settlements that, while being slightly less "cool" in one respect, actually fits most of my criteria MUCH better than the place I'd initially selected. In fact, it turns out that there were some very practical issues with my original choice that actually made it a terrible location, but I didn't realize that until I did some research. The new location is far superior in this one critical aspect. And no, I didn't say what this aspect was - apologies for any confusion or re-reading this may have caused, but I'm being deliberately vague until such time as the book is finished and has been accepted for publication.
So while Friday's work felt very lacklustre at the time, to the point of actually making me angry over all that I hadn't accomplished during the day, it was absolutely vital and necessary to the eventual completion of my work and will end up having a very positive, practical impact on the book. Yes, writing it out that way does make me feel better. Apparently blogging can be therapeutic. Who knew?
Now that I'm fully engaged in my book(s), I may occasionally make additional brief updates like this one at odd times and possibly even on weekends.
Yesterday (Friday, December 4th) felt like a waste, and by bedtime I was extremely grumpy. I didn't even open my "chapter" Word documents, and thus added no real prose to my novel. Nor did I copy so much as one line of notes from my handwritten notepad into my OneNote repository.
Which isn't to say that I didn't accomplish anything of value. It just didn't feel like I was making progress the way it does when I write creative content or at least copy over the notes that I need to transcribe in support of writing that content.
What I did, instead, was spend around six hours poring over Google Maps and Wikipedia to research some fairly important information for the setting of my novel. There are at least two significant population centers to be visited in my first book, and I had had some general ideas about them, including:
- What sorts of major cities they're near
- How big they are
- Certain natural resources that they have access to
- Certain man-made resources that they have access to
Also, for reasons that will be clear when and if you ever read this novel, I needed to know what military installations exist in those same regions of the country and (if possible) have a general idea of the numbers and types of material and personnel at each of them.
The result of all of these needs? Yesterday's research-a-rama. Hours upon hours of following links on Wikipedia, then blasting out from them to Google Maps. The result? Well, I now have a OneNote Tab titled "Research" on which I've copied and pasted links to Wiki articles as well as the names and rough locations of several dozen US military bases. In addition to that rather simplistic (if very time-consuming) research, I got some good news and some bad news:
The Bad News: I discovered that the two places I'd intended to set some important chunks of my book were totally unsuitable relative to each other. Crap. In the context of my work, having two important communities exist 700 miles apart is totally unworkable. I was able to brainstorm some solutions that made it work, one of which I liked enough that thematically I may very well end up using it anyway, but they were "fixes" for a problem that I needed to be smart and clever enough to accept ought to be avoided altogether. Hooray for being smart and clever, I suppose.
The Good News: I actually found a new location for one of the settlements that, while being slightly less "cool" in one respect, actually fits most of my criteria MUCH better than the place I'd initially selected. In fact, it turns out that there were some very practical issues with my original choice that actually made it a terrible location, but I didn't realize that until I did some research. The new location is far superior in this one critical aspect. And no, I didn't say what this aspect was - apologies for any confusion or re-reading this may have caused, but I'm being deliberately vague until such time as the book is finished and has been accepted for publication.
So while Friday's work felt very lacklustre at the time, to the point of actually making me angry over all that I hadn't accomplished during the day, it was absolutely vital and necessary to the eventual completion of my work and will end up having a very positive, practical impact on the book. Yes, writing it out that way does make me feel better. Apparently blogging can be therapeutic. Who knew?
Friday, December 4, 2009
Easy reading is damn hard writing - Nathaniel Hawthorne
My first couple of weeks as a writer
I’m now two weeks into my first novel. In that time, I’ve written every single day except maybe one (I think I might not have on Thanksgiving, but I don’t remember for certain). Last night, I paused to reflect on how it’s going so far, and decided that this blog, having been started as an online writing journal, was the right place to capture those thoughts.
But first, a few more of my favorite writing quotes:
I knew going in that I’d be challenged with this new undertaking. I’ve never written anything longer than a long short story, and I’ve barely written at all in the last fifteen years. Though that’s not my concern – I never “learned” to write in any really formal sense, I started with some greater or lesser amount of natural talent and simply refined it a bit (if at all). So it never really occurred to me that I might have “forgotten” how to write. I did suspect, briefly, that being out of practice might have dulled my edge a bit, but to put my mind at ease I whipped out the short story “If the One Doesn’t Get You” and posted it on this blog back in August. It’s not my best work and surely needs a serious rewrite, but it helped to give me comfort that I was still reasonably adept at composing an interesting story.
My concern was that the first story I’ve sat down to write has been in my head now for a year and some months, and I’ve given it considerable thought in that time. Which is a challenge for me in two ways that are essentially opposites of each other. First, I have taken copious notes on the story, its characters, its setting, major events, themes, motivations and all manner of other elements that are very useful to have considered when you’re telling a story. But this work creates one problem of its own and leads directly to the other one that I’d mentioned.
The first problem is that all of that information has been captured in moderately useless ways. Most of it had been written down, by hand, in various notepads. Some of it I had emailed to myself from work or on my blackberry. And a sizable chunk of it had been captured in a Word document that I had updated whenever I was at a computer and had a thought I needed to record while it was fresh in my mind.
And all three of these formats, as I said, are useless. The notepad is nice when you’re sitting in bed and need to jot something down, but it’s not at all helpful when I need to search for a particular idea. The emails are at least in an electronic format, yet they’re spread across dozens of separate memos and are thus equally disorganized, even in if they’re technically searchable. And the word document, while entirely searchable, is just one long list of ideas sorted by the date I typed them in. It’s very searchable, but not good at connecting the idea that I had about Character X on March 12th with a contrary idea about the same character that I’d had two months earlier.
Moreover, all of these documents contain “stream of consciousness” notes. Each is a medium in which I recorded whatever thought popped into my head, with no consideration, analysis, or review of any kind. Thus, some of the ideas are just plain lousy, many are half-formed at best, and quite a few of them directly contradict other ideas. They not only need to be organized, but once they are they really need to be read and judged for quality.
So I’ve got thousands upon thousands of words worth of information for my book. Sounds great, right? Organize it and get writing! Well, yes and no. You see, there are enormous gaps in my notes – aspects of the book that I never came up with ideas for, including huge gaping holes in the basic storyline. Which, for me, is worse in some ways than if I just sat down and started writing without much of an idea of where I planned to go. You see, I like many of the ideas I had, but to use them I’m now bound to write in such a way as to fold them naturally into the larger story without creating huge continuity gaps or otherwise creating a scenario where the later parts of the story don’t fit with what I’ve already written. It’s a huge puzzle where various parts are already assembled, but the remaining areas not only aren’t assembled, but actually need me to cut the pieces out of cardboard and make them fit.
Still, I’m enjoying the work very much so far. I’ve written the better part of three chapters, plus an extra chunk that might replace a chapter, or be folded into that chapter, or be expanded to be a chapter on its own. These chapters are all more-or-less in the “first draft” category, however I’ve come up with a writing process that mitigates that somewhat. Each day that I continue a chapter begun previously, I re-read and revise that chapter from the beginning. If a chapter takes me multiple days to write, it will get multiple revisions before I get to the last paragraph. Periodically, I also plan to go back and just sample random chapters to look for any weak writing or just to keep them fresh in my memory if nothing else. So by the time the “first draft” of the book is done, I should have each individual chapter in more of a “second draft” state. It won’t necessarily address issues of continuity, pace, theme or other elements that permeate the entire work, but it’s better than just letting the words dribble from mind to fingers to keyboard without ever going back to see what the hell did I just write and is it any good?
I’ve also made tremendous progress transcribing my notes. I completed my first notepad and set it aside, and I’m roughly 70% of the way through my second. The third one is actually only half-full, and I’ve discovered that the notepads I used most recently were rather wide-ruled and had fairly thick paper, meaning that there’s slightly less room in each of them than I’d initially thought. It’s still an insane amount of work, but I’m making strong headway on it.
I was initially torn between entering all of these notes into Microsoft Word, with which I’m exceedingly familiar, and Microsoft OneNote, which I’ve used a bit, but not nearly to the same extent as Word. I had to go with OneNote, however, simply because it’s MADE to do exactly what I’m doing, while Word is not. I’ll still write my books in Word, but OneNote is all about taking, organizing and referencing your notes. That’s all it does, but it does it pretty darn well. I’m even using the latest version – the Beta of Microsoft OneNote 2010 (which I downloaded as part of the overall Microsoft Office 2010 package). And so far, I’m almost totally thrilled with it. I’m disappointed that they had to make the 2010 version of OneNote incompatible with OneNote 2007, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any functionality loss at all when you save your notes in “compatibility” mode, meaning they can be read in the 2007 software. Otherwise, however, Office 2010 has some really fine changes that I approve of and am enjoying quite a bit. I plan to write a review of it sometime down the road when I’ve really had time to pull it all apart and examine it from every angle.
One minor gripe with OneNote – and one that typically wouldn’t be a factor at all except for the sheer volume of information that I’m currently pounding into it – is that it doesn’t seem able to tell you how many words are in a given workbook. When I’ve typed all of my 15+ months worth of notes into the software, I’d really like to see just how much there is in there. For bragging rights, if nothing else. Hey, it’s a significant effort, I feel I’m entitled.
So that’s where I stand so far – three chapters into the story, plus a bit more, and around half of my total notes entered into OneNote. I’ll need to then review all of the notes and pull out just the ideas that reflect where I currently want the story to go (since, as I said, some of the ideas weren’t necessarily well thought-out, plus I’ve refined my concept of what the book’s about quite a bit and some of the older story ideas no longer fit). And I’ll need to sit down and fill in some of the blanks about how the story’s going to get from Point A to Point F to Point K, when points B, C, D, E, G, H and I are as yet unwritten. I’m not a person for whom outlines are an optimal tool – I find that the more of the story I plan out in advance, the less excitement I feel about actually writing it – but I will need to figure out why some of the stuff that happens later is able to happen or why anybody would care that it happened, and that will necessitate at least some minimal planning on my part.
It’s slow going at first, though I’d suspected it might take me a bit to build up a head of steam as it were, but it’s exciting to really be doing it. And best of all, I know that when I’m done, I’ll have written a story that I’ll really enjoy. I like stories, and I like telling stories, and for the first time in my life I’m devoting myself to doing exactly that. There is a book that I very much want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet. I must write it.
I’m now two weeks into my first novel. In that time, I’ve written every single day except maybe one (I think I might not have on Thanksgiving, but I don’t remember for certain). Last night, I paused to reflect on how it’s going so far, and decided that this blog, having been started as an online writing journal, was the right place to capture those thoughts.
But first, a few more of my favorite writing quotes:
If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.
- Toni Morrison
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
- Anton Chekhov
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author .
- G.K. Chesterton
I knew going in that I’d be challenged with this new undertaking. I’ve never written anything longer than a long short story, and I’ve barely written at all in the last fifteen years. Though that’s not my concern – I never “learned” to write in any really formal sense, I started with some greater or lesser amount of natural talent and simply refined it a bit (if at all). So it never really occurred to me that I might have “forgotten” how to write. I did suspect, briefly, that being out of practice might have dulled my edge a bit, but to put my mind at ease I whipped out the short story “If the One Doesn’t Get You” and posted it on this blog back in August. It’s not my best work and surely needs a serious rewrite, but it helped to give me comfort that I was still reasonably adept at composing an interesting story.
My concern was that the first story I’ve sat down to write has been in my head now for a year and some months, and I’ve given it considerable thought in that time. Which is a challenge for me in two ways that are essentially opposites of each other. First, I have taken copious notes on the story, its characters, its setting, major events, themes, motivations and all manner of other elements that are very useful to have considered when you’re telling a story. But this work creates one problem of its own and leads directly to the other one that I’d mentioned.
The first problem is that all of that information has been captured in moderately useless ways. Most of it had been written down, by hand, in various notepads. Some of it I had emailed to myself from work or on my blackberry. And a sizable chunk of it had been captured in a Word document that I had updated whenever I was at a computer and had a thought I needed to record while it was fresh in my mind.
And all three of these formats, as I said, are useless. The notepad is nice when you’re sitting in bed and need to jot something down, but it’s not at all helpful when I need to search for a particular idea. The emails are at least in an electronic format, yet they’re spread across dozens of separate memos and are thus equally disorganized, even in if they’re technically searchable. And the word document, while entirely searchable, is just one long list of ideas sorted by the date I typed them in. It’s very searchable, but not good at connecting the idea that I had about Character X on March 12th with a contrary idea about the same character that I’d had two months earlier.
Moreover, all of these documents contain “stream of consciousness” notes. Each is a medium in which I recorded whatever thought popped into my head, with no consideration, analysis, or review of any kind. Thus, some of the ideas are just plain lousy, many are half-formed at best, and quite a few of them directly contradict other ideas. They not only need to be organized, but once they are they really need to be read and judged for quality.
So I’ve got thousands upon thousands of words worth of information for my book. Sounds great, right? Organize it and get writing! Well, yes and no. You see, there are enormous gaps in my notes – aspects of the book that I never came up with ideas for, including huge gaping holes in the basic storyline. Which, for me, is worse in some ways than if I just sat down and started writing without much of an idea of where I planned to go. You see, I like many of the ideas I had, but to use them I’m now bound to write in such a way as to fold them naturally into the larger story without creating huge continuity gaps or otherwise creating a scenario where the later parts of the story don’t fit with what I’ve already written. It’s a huge puzzle where various parts are already assembled, but the remaining areas not only aren’t assembled, but actually need me to cut the pieces out of cardboard and make them fit.
Still, I’m enjoying the work very much so far. I’ve written the better part of three chapters, plus an extra chunk that might replace a chapter, or be folded into that chapter, or be expanded to be a chapter on its own. These chapters are all more-or-less in the “first draft” category, however I’ve come up with a writing process that mitigates that somewhat. Each day that I continue a chapter begun previously, I re-read and revise that chapter from the beginning. If a chapter takes me multiple days to write, it will get multiple revisions before I get to the last paragraph. Periodically, I also plan to go back and just sample random chapters to look for any weak writing or just to keep them fresh in my memory if nothing else. So by the time the “first draft” of the book is done, I should have each individual chapter in more of a “second draft” state. It won’t necessarily address issues of continuity, pace, theme or other elements that permeate the entire work, but it’s better than just letting the words dribble from mind to fingers to keyboard without ever going back to see what the hell did I just write and is it any good?
I’ve also made tremendous progress transcribing my notes. I completed my first notepad and set it aside, and I’m roughly 70% of the way through my second. The third one is actually only half-full, and I’ve discovered that the notepads I used most recently were rather wide-ruled and had fairly thick paper, meaning that there’s slightly less room in each of them than I’d initially thought. It’s still an insane amount of work, but I’m making strong headway on it.
I was initially torn between entering all of these notes into Microsoft Word, with which I’m exceedingly familiar, and Microsoft OneNote, which I’ve used a bit, but not nearly to the same extent as Word. I had to go with OneNote, however, simply because it’s MADE to do exactly what I’m doing, while Word is not. I’ll still write my books in Word, but OneNote is all about taking, organizing and referencing your notes. That’s all it does, but it does it pretty darn well. I’m even using the latest version – the Beta of Microsoft OneNote 2010 (which I downloaded as part of the overall Microsoft Office 2010 package). And so far, I’m almost totally thrilled with it. I’m disappointed that they had to make the 2010 version of OneNote incompatible with OneNote 2007, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any functionality loss at all when you save your notes in “compatibility” mode, meaning they can be read in the 2007 software. Otherwise, however, Office 2010 has some really fine changes that I approve of and am enjoying quite a bit. I plan to write a review of it sometime down the road when I’ve really had time to pull it all apart and examine it from every angle.
One minor gripe with OneNote – and one that typically wouldn’t be a factor at all except for the sheer volume of information that I’m currently pounding into it – is that it doesn’t seem able to tell you how many words are in a given workbook. When I’ve typed all of my 15+ months worth of notes into the software, I’d really like to see just how much there is in there. For bragging rights, if nothing else. Hey, it’s a significant effort, I feel I’m entitled.
So that’s where I stand so far – three chapters into the story, plus a bit more, and around half of my total notes entered into OneNote. I’ll need to then review all of the notes and pull out just the ideas that reflect where I currently want the story to go (since, as I said, some of the ideas weren’t necessarily well thought-out, plus I’ve refined my concept of what the book’s about quite a bit and some of the older story ideas no longer fit). And I’ll need to sit down and fill in some of the blanks about how the story’s going to get from Point A to Point F to Point K, when points B, C, D, E, G, H and I are as yet unwritten. I’m not a person for whom outlines are an optimal tool – I find that the more of the story I plan out in advance, the less excitement I feel about actually writing it – but I will need to figure out why some of the stuff that happens later is able to happen or why anybody would care that it happened, and that will necessitate at least some minimal planning on my part.
It’s slow going at first, though I’d suspected it might take me a bit to build up a head of steam as it were, but it’s exciting to really be doing it. And best of all, I know that when I’m done, I’ll have written a story that I’ll really enjoy. I like stories, and I like telling stories, and for the first time in my life I’m devoting myself to doing exactly that. There is a book that I very much want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet. I must write it.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
[Book Review] Under the Dome
A book by Stephen King
Stephen King is known as a “master of the macabre,” so it should be no surprise that his latest novel is a monster. I don’t mean that it’s about evil creatures, I mean that it’s FREAKING HUGE! It’s been a while since I’ve read a hardcover novel that was over 1000 pages – I think George R.R. Martin and perhaps Robert Jordan each had a novel this big, and before that would have been my copy of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, but that’s about it. Still, contrary to my usual procedure with regard to very heavy things, I could NOT seem to put this book down. In Under the Dome, King tells a cautionary tale of humanity at its best and worst that grabs you and won’t let go. Its' often very short chapters seem to whir by like individual frames of a motion picture film reel. I’m probably not what most would consider a “King fan” as I’ve only read a handful of his works, but I definitely liked this one.
Under the Dome is a story about a very small Maine town that, one ordinary Saturday in October, suddenly finds itself completely encased in an otherworldly fish tank that exactly matches the borders of the town. The invisible barrier isolates the town completely. Though the attention of the world focuses upon them from outside, it can’t touch them, can’t affect them in any meaningful way, and so it becomes irrelevant. All that matters are the 2,000 or so people inside and their goals, their values, their desires and, ultimately, their deepest secrets.
Under the Dome examines well-worn themes from the perspective of organisms in a petri dish – wriggling around, going about their own lives, but always observed. In this case, we, the reader, are an observer as people commit horrible crimes from which they are physically unable to escape. We watch as people justify their evil to themselves as being for the good of the community or, worse, necessary because of the “current crisis.” There’s factionalization, as people begin to divide up behind different leaders, and every sort of tyranny from police brutality to state-sponsored terrorism, all occurring very believably in a rural northeastern town in the good old US of A. As you'd expect, there's some heroism and principled behaviour as well, but sadly only about as much as you'd get from real human beings - and much less than you'd hope.
Two of King’s strengths show through in this story. The first is his ability to create impressive numbers of very real-seeming characters who behave like people we might actually know. And even when we’ve never met anyone who approximates a particular character, we imagine that we very well could have, because they’re fleshed out in such a way that they seem very real. There are dozens of key characters in this novel, and I won’t pretend that I often had to stop and think, “Who’s Andy again? Have I seen Sam before? Who’s this gal?” There’s an abridged Dramatis Personae in the front that’s a big help, and I referred to it through probably the first half of the book or more. Part of that’s just my crappy memory – you may wrap your mind around the characters more quickly than that.
King’s other ability is to weave those characters into and through each others’ stories in ways that introduce incredible amounts of stress and conflict into their lives. Both the weaving and the conflict are important. As you’d expect in a small New England town encased in an invisible wall, the characters are constantly treading through each other’s storylines, for better or worse, adding complexity and tension to the tale in very positive ways. From the reader’s perspective anyway – some of the characters could surely have done with less tension.
I started this book over the Thanksgiving holiday and finished it by Monday night. There’s no question that I’ve never plunged through 1000 pages with such vigor, such ravenous need to know what’s next, as I did with this book. I’d love to examine more of it in detail, but there’s very little I can think to say about it that wouldn’t spoil major parts of the book for you. And if you’re going to read a book this big (and this good), you ought to get to come at it fresh, in my opinion. I don’t know if I’d say that Under the Dome is one of the best books I’ve ever read – there are story concepts and characters in other books that engage me more directly and more strongly than those of this book. The characters were, by and large, just ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances, after all. By design. But I can’t think of too many books that entertained me the way this one did, so if you’re looking for a book to take hold of your attention and not let go until the ride is over – sort of the fiction equivalent to a really amazing amusement park ride, I suppose – then this book will do the trick. I think if one were to take this book on a plane, for instance, it would be the best way to make the flight seem so brief that you’ll barely notice it at all. I was delighted by Under the Dome and enjoyed it very much. I rate it a very solid A and recommend it highly.
Stephen King is known as a “master of the macabre,” so it should be no surprise that his latest novel is a monster. I don’t mean that it’s about evil creatures, I mean that it’s FREAKING HUGE! It’s been a while since I’ve read a hardcover novel that was over 1000 pages – I think George R.R. Martin and perhaps Robert Jordan each had a novel this big, and before that would have been my copy of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, but that’s about it. Still, contrary to my usual procedure with regard to very heavy things, I could NOT seem to put this book down. In Under the Dome, King tells a cautionary tale of humanity at its best and worst that grabs you and won’t let go. Its' often very short chapters seem to whir by like individual frames of a motion picture film reel. I’m probably not what most would consider a “King fan” as I’ve only read a handful of his works, but I definitely liked this one.
Under the Dome is a story about a very small Maine town that, one ordinary Saturday in October, suddenly finds itself completely encased in an otherworldly fish tank that exactly matches the borders of the town. The invisible barrier isolates the town completely. Though the attention of the world focuses upon them from outside, it can’t touch them, can’t affect them in any meaningful way, and so it becomes irrelevant. All that matters are the 2,000 or so people inside and their goals, their values, their desires and, ultimately, their deepest secrets.
Under the Dome examines well-worn themes from the perspective of organisms in a petri dish – wriggling around, going about their own lives, but always observed. In this case, we, the reader, are an observer as people commit horrible crimes from which they are physically unable to escape. We watch as people justify their evil to themselves as being for the good of the community or, worse, necessary because of the “current crisis.” There’s factionalization, as people begin to divide up behind different leaders, and every sort of tyranny from police brutality to state-sponsored terrorism, all occurring very believably in a rural northeastern town in the good old US of A. As you'd expect, there's some heroism and principled behaviour as well, but sadly only about as much as you'd get from real human beings - and much less than you'd hope.
Two of King’s strengths show through in this story. The first is his ability to create impressive numbers of very real-seeming characters who behave like people we might actually know. And even when we’ve never met anyone who approximates a particular character, we imagine that we very well could have, because they’re fleshed out in such a way that they seem very real. There are dozens of key characters in this novel, and I won’t pretend that I often had to stop and think, “Who’s Andy again? Have I seen Sam before? Who’s this gal?” There’s an abridged Dramatis Personae in the front that’s a big help, and I referred to it through probably the first half of the book or more. Part of that’s just my crappy memory – you may wrap your mind around the characters more quickly than that.
King’s other ability is to weave those characters into and through each others’ stories in ways that introduce incredible amounts of stress and conflict into their lives. Both the weaving and the conflict are important. As you’d expect in a small New England town encased in an invisible wall, the characters are constantly treading through each other’s storylines, for better or worse, adding complexity and tension to the tale in very positive ways. From the reader’s perspective anyway – some of the characters could surely have done with less tension.
I started this book over the Thanksgiving holiday and finished it by Monday night. There’s no question that I’ve never plunged through 1000 pages with such vigor, such ravenous need to know what’s next, as I did with this book. I’d love to examine more of it in detail, but there’s very little I can think to say about it that wouldn’t spoil major parts of the book for you. And if you’re going to read a book this big (and this good), you ought to get to come at it fresh, in my opinion. I don’t know if I’d say that Under the Dome is one of the best books I’ve ever read – there are story concepts and characters in other books that engage me more directly and more strongly than those of this book. The characters were, by and large, just ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances, after all. By design. But I can’t think of too many books that entertained me the way this one did, so if you’re looking for a book to take hold of your attention and not let go until the ride is over – sort of the fiction equivalent to a really amazing amusement park ride, I suppose – then this book will do the trick. I think if one were to take this book on a plane, for instance, it would be the best way to make the flight seem so brief that you’ll barely notice it at all. I was delighted by Under the Dome and enjoyed it very much. I rate it a very solid A and recommend it highly.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Chores
or, Get to work, kid!
I’m a big believer in chores. Of course, they’re there whether I believe in them or not, but I believe in making my kids do as many of them as possible. Part of this is just practicality – it takes a lot more work to maintain a house with five people than it did when there were just two of us, and four of those people are complete slobs. Err, I mean three of them are. Just the kids, of course. Yes, my wife reads my blog.
Anyway, if all five of those people can contribute to cleaning up, it obviously makes the work load less burdensome for everybody. But I think there are bigger reasons for my kids to do their chores. One of the reasons I can only hope will actually pan out, but the other is all but certain. The latter being that I want my kids to know how to do chores. There’s nothing complicated about cleaning a toilet or vacuuming a carpet – they’re not great mysteries to be magically unveiled when you’re all grown up and finally decide to act like an adult. A hundred years ago, kids well under ten were vital members of the household, responsible for the smooth operation of their parents’ farm or business. Granted, in some cases they were supporting the burgeoning second industrial revolution by having their fingers ripped off by steam-powered looms, but even then at least they were being productive with their time.
My kids have a regimen that includes cleaning the toilets, sinks, counters and mirrors in the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms. They also vacuum the carpets on the main floor, and take out the garbage on trash day. None of these chores are particularly onerous, but at least they can’t ever say that they don’t know how.
The other goal is more lofty and less certain. I’d like it if my kids gained some sense of personal responsibility for maintaining their domicile. I’d love it if they felt some compulsion to carry their share of the burden in maintaining our shared residence. I’d be ecstatic if they felt like giving back to their parents for all we do for them by taking on some of our labor and helping us out. So far, I’ve seen not even the most minimal evidence that these sorts of thoughts have entered their minds. In fact, while they’ve demonstrated that they’re more than capable of doing these and other chores entirely unassisted, they will whine and moan to my wife if she’s home until she agrees to help them by doing some of the work for them.
So we’ve got a long way to go on that one. Which concerns me – I know there are kids in the world who are capable of thinking of others before themselves, of greeting the world with a sense of charity instead of entitlement. I just don’t know how to instill those values in my kids. We try to lead by example – we certainly do for them all day every day, largely without complaint, but they don’t seem to make the connection. We donate to charity, particularly to the Rescue Mission, and we involve them when we do, but they don’t seem to feel any desire to imitate us through their own generosity.
So, I don’t appeal to their altruism. But neither do I conscript them and compel them by force of will or force of arms to execute their duties. Instead, I essentially bribe them. But I don’t really trust them with actual money just yet, so I created my own household currency.
This is a picture of a Chore Card. I created a whole deck of them, one for each of my two older kids. The youngest will get his deck sometime in the next year or so. There are approximately 100 points that could be earned, per kid, in a given week.
This is a picture of a Reward Card. There’s a separate stack of these, which the kids can earn by redeeming their chore points. When I designed these cards, I did it with the idea that as a stretch goal each kid might earn between 80% and 100% of their possible chore points in a given week (although most chores are do-able only once a week total, not once per kid, so both kids couldn’t actually earn all of the possible points if the other kid also did chores). I then set the point costs on the reward cards such that the kids could make the equivalent of about $5 per week, or a bit more by aggressively doing their chores.
We’ve been using these cards for about a year now, and that isn’t what happened. In fact, the kids generally earn about 15% of the possible points each week, and that only because I designated certain key chores as “mandatory.” If they fail to do them, they not only don’t earn those points, they actually have double the number of points they could have earned SUBTRACTED from their point totals. EACH. Yeah, I was annoyed, but it was frustrating that they found even a minimal number of chores so onerous that even outright bribery didn’t faze them. And the rewards could be fairly lucrative if they chose to save their points from week to week, culminating in things like dinner at favorite restaurants or even Wii games that I’ve already purchased and which they really want to play.
So let’s recap. Learned how to do chores? Check. Imbued with a sense of charity and personal responsibility? Dismal failure. Susceptible to outright bribery? Nope. That last one may be a plus if they ever get into public service, I suppose. In the meantime, I can at least take solace in the fact that whatever chores they do, for whatever reason they’re doing, is at least one less I have to do myself. I can live with that.
I’m a big believer in chores. Of course, they’re there whether I believe in them or not, but I believe in making my kids do as many of them as possible. Part of this is just practicality – it takes a lot more work to maintain a house with five people than it did when there were just two of us, and four of those people are complete slobs. Err, I mean three of them are. Just the kids, of course. Yes, my wife reads my blog.
Anyway, if all five of those people can contribute to cleaning up, it obviously makes the work load less burdensome for everybody. But I think there are bigger reasons for my kids to do their chores. One of the reasons I can only hope will actually pan out, but the other is all but certain. The latter being that I want my kids to know how to do chores. There’s nothing complicated about cleaning a toilet or vacuuming a carpet – they’re not great mysteries to be magically unveiled when you’re all grown up and finally decide to act like an adult. A hundred years ago, kids well under ten were vital members of the household, responsible for the smooth operation of their parents’ farm or business. Granted, in some cases they were supporting the burgeoning second industrial revolution by having their fingers ripped off by steam-powered looms, but even then at least they were being productive with their time.
My kids have a regimen that includes cleaning the toilets, sinks, counters and mirrors in the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms. They also vacuum the carpets on the main floor, and take out the garbage on trash day. None of these chores are particularly onerous, but at least they can’t ever say that they don’t know how.
The other goal is more lofty and less certain. I’d like it if my kids gained some sense of personal responsibility for maintaining their domicile. I’d love it if they felt some compulsion to carry their share of the burden in maintaining our shared residence. I’d be ecstatic if they felt like giving back to their parents for all we do for them by taking on some of our labor and helping us out. So far, I’ve seen not even the most minimal evidence that these sorts of thoughts have entered their minds. In fact, while they’ve demonstrated that they’re more than capable of doing these and other chores entirely unassisted, they will whine and moan to my wife if she’s home until she agrees to help them by doing some of the work for them.
So we’ve got a long way to go on that one. Which concerns me – I know there are kids in the world who are capable of thinking of others before themselves, of greeting the world with a sense of charity instead of entitlement. I just don’t know how to instill those values in my kids. We try to lead by example – we certainly do for them all day every day, largely without complaint, but they don’t seem to make the connection. We donate to charity, particularly to the Rescue Mission, and we involve them when we do, but they don’t seem to feel any desire to imitate us through their own generosity.
So, I don’t appeal to their altruism. But neither do I conscript them and compel them by force of will or force of arms to execute their duties. Instead, I essentially bribe them. But I don’t really trust them with actual money just yet, so I created my own household currency.
This is a picture of a Chore Card. I created a whole deck of them, one for each of my two older kids. The youngest will get his deck sometime in the next year or so. There are approximately 100 points that could be earned, per kid, in a given week.
This is a picture of a Reward Card. There’s a separate stack of these, which the kids can earn by redeeming their chore points. When I designed these cards, I did it with the idea that as a stretch goal each kid might earn between 80% and 100% of their possible chore points in a given week (although most chores are do-able only once a week total, not once per kid, so both kids couldn’t actually earn all of the possible points if the other kid also did chores). I then set the point costs on the reward cards such that the kids could make the equivalent of about $5 per week, or a bit more by aggressively doing their chores.
We’ve been using these cards for about a year now, and that isn’t what happened. In fact, the kids generally earn about 15% of the possible points each week, and that only because I designated certain key chores as “mandatory.” If they fail to do them, they not only don’t earn those points, they actually have double the number of points they could have earned SUBTRACTED from their point totals. EACH. Yeah, I was annoyed, but it was frustrating that they found even a minimal number of chores so onerous that even outright bribery didn’t faze them. And the rewards could be fairly lucrative if they chose to save their points from week to week, culminating in things like dinner at favorite restaurants or even Wii games that I’ve already purchased and which they really want to play.
So let’s recap. Learned how to do chores? Check. Imbued with a sense of charity and personal responsibility? Dismal failure. Susceptible to outright bribery? Nope. That last one may be a plus if they ever get into public service, I suppose. In the meantime, I can at least take solace in the fact that whatever chores they do, for whatever reason they’re doing, is at least one less I have to do myself. I can live with that.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
[Book Review] The Lost Symbol
A book by Dan Brown
This is the fourth book of Brown’s that I’ve read. Like many, I started with The Da Vinci Code, after which I went back and read Digital Fortress and Angels & Demons. And they all follow pretty much the same pattern:
It’s formulaic, but that’s not automatically bad. Much if not most of Shakespeare’s work can be (and certainly has been) broken down into formulas as well, and people still read, perform and enjoy his work 400 years later. The quality of the story has a lot more to do with the strength of the narrative, the pace, the characterization, the themes and all of the other elements that make up an entertaining story. And, in Brown’s case, it has a lot to do with how thorough his research was and how crafty he is at creating a complex skein of twisted threads that he then untwists through the eyes of poor oft-pummeled but never-loved Professor Langdon.
In this case, Brown was every bit as crafty as he was in his prior two works. This time he explores the hidden mysteries of the Freemason society and the impact they had on the design and structures of Washington D.C., the which is often fodder for internet conspiracy theorists. The setting is a much smaller area than in the last novel, in that it sticks pretty much just to a handful of buildings in the immediate downtown D.C. area, with only a couple of exceptions – unlike the Da Vinci code which had Langdon travel all over Paris and London both, as well as visiting Geneva. The Lost Symbol is more like Angels and Demons in that regard, which took place almost entirely in and around Vatican City in Rome.
Langdon is the same brilliant cyborg lecturer as always, his eidetic memory giving him access to encyclopedias worth of obscure knowledge and his sharp mind allowing him to make observations and connections that would otherwise be missed. We also get a much better insight into the mind of the “bad guy” in this book, though Brown tries so hard to hold onto the character’s secrets that we lose any opportunity of really feeling like we know him, since whatever the hell he’s actually trying to do through the whole book is maddeningly obfuscated.
Moreover, while Brown’s research is impeccable (which isn’t to say I’m ready to buy that it’s all accurate, but he’s certainly a master at finding obscure works of art, artists, locations and historical figures from all over the world and painting a realistic-sounding account of how they’re all tied together, whether or not they actually were), I felt that his narrative suffered in this book. For starters, some of the secrets that he was so carefully trying to keep hidden until the very end jumped out at me fairly early on. One in particular, related to the main bad guy, wasn’t revealed until the final chapters but was clear to me probably a quarter of the way into the book. And I don’t pretend to be all that smart or insightful, I think it was just much more obvious than Brown wanted it to be.
Also, the beginning of the book was lackluster for a lot longer than I can recall Brown’s other books having been. It seemed to take forever for the story to get moving, a complication that I believe was added by the presence of a government official who was much more involved in this book than in the others, but served to slow the pace tremendously as she struggled to insert herself into the story. I clearly remember observing to my wife at least twice that the story seemed to be taking forever to get going. Once it did, it raced along nicely, but I suspect that Brown was experimenting with some things like letting us know the antagonist better and introducing the government official and it didn’t end up working out as well as he might have wanted. Granted, the book has already sold a bazillion copies so I doubt that he’s too upset about it.
There was one other difference between this story and the prior two, but I don’t want to spoil it for those who plan to read this novel but haven’t done so yet. Spoilers follow, so skip the next two paragraphs if you want to read the book as a Lost Symbol virgin:
In the prior two works, Langdon pitted his academic skepticism against religious mysticism and won. In the end, it was clearly reveled that what many took to be magic or divine influence was nothing more than human ritual and genius. In the Lost Symbol, the opposite occurs. We’re introduced to the spiritualism of the Freemasons, who guard the lost secrets of the ancients and their superior understanding of the human mind’s capacity for paranormal expression. Brown ties together the ancient lost secrets guarded by the Masons and the modern science of Noetics, which studies everything from faith healing to the existence of the soul.
And, in a big departure from his earlier works, concludes that the spiritualism is genuine and is on the brink of changing the world. While Langdon, the character, seems to remain at least nominally skeptical, Brown seems to have bought into the idea and ends the book with the world about to learn that “God is inside each of us” and that the mind is able to work miracles. Given the extent to which Brown’s earlier works were bastions of skepticism and secularism, I found the ending of The Lost Symbol more fantastical than I’d expected, and it was a bit jarring. It wasn’t so overt as to feel like a Jehovah’s Witness standing at your door challenging your beliefs (or lack thereof), but it felt a little sneaky primarily because I was expecting the usual humanist, mysticism-free resolution and didn’t get it.
Spoilers complete
Overall, The Lost Symbol is an entertaining and enlightening read. At least, it’s enlightening to whatever extent the information about the Masons and Washington D.C. architecture is factual and unencumbered by artistic license. It makes a solid addition to the Robert Langdon saga, despite starting a bit slowly and involving some elements (ie. the spoilers, above) that struck me as out of place in this series. The book engaged and amused me, which is mostly what I require of a novel, despite its flaws. I rate Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol a solid B.
This is the fourth book of Brown’s that I’ve read. Like many, I started with The Da Vinci Code, after which I went back and read Digital Fortress and Angels & Demons. And they all follow pretty much the same pattern:
- Enter the bad guy, intent on doing bad stuff and reveling in how glorious it is to be bad (or, in his mind, good).
- Somebody dies, loses body parts, or is otherwise in mortal peril
- Enter Robert Langdon, tweed-wearing Harvard professor of symbology and all-around genius.
- Langdon is suddenly and mysteriously brought to some strange and mysterious place that average folks may or may not know about, but never get to really explore and wouldn’t understand if they did.
- Langdon (and his female cohort) race against time to unravel a mystery involving ancient (or modern) symbolism, delving into all sorts of dark places, lost tombs, hidden alcoves, and famous buildings hiding secrets in plain sight.
- Langdon pauses occasionally to give lectures on symbolism, western world history, cryptography, linguistics, religion, great western thinkers, secret societies and the ignorance of the masses as involves any of the above.
- The bad guy reveals himself and Langdon is clubbed, drugged, trussed up and otherwise assaulted, as is his femme fatale.
- Cleverly deducing the true meaning of the previously-misunderstood symbols, Langdon thwarts the bad guy, saves the damsel and, sometimes, the world.
- Being an academic and ascetic, Langdon does not get the phone number of the damsel or offer to buy her dinner in Paris, Rome, Geneva, Washington D.C. or any of the other cities where his adventures are set, but instead goes home and reads a book.
- The End
It’s formulaic, but that’s not automatically bad. Much if not most of Shakespeare’s work can be (and certainly has been) broken down into formulas as well, and people still read, perform and enjoy his work 400 years later. The quality of the story has a lot more to do with the strength of the narrative, the pace, the characterization, the themes and all of the other elements that make up an entertaining story. And, in Brown’s case, it has a lot to do with how thorough his research was and how crafty he is at creating a complex skein of twisted threads that he then untwists through the eyes of poor oft-pummeled but never-loved Professor Langdon.
In this case, Brown was every bit as crafty as he was in his prior two works. This time he explores the hidden mysteries of the Freemason society and the impact they had on the design and structures of Washington D.C., the which is often fodder for internet conspiracy theorists. The setting is a much smaller area than in the last novel, in that it sticks pretty much just to a handful of buildings in the immediate downtown D.C. area, with only a couple of exceptions – unlike the Da Vinci code which had Langdon travel all over Paris and London both, as well as visiting Geneva. The Lost Symbol is more like Angels and Demons in that regard, which took place almost entirely in and around Vatican City in Rome.
Langdon is the same brilliant cyborg lecturer as always, his eidetic memory giving him access to encyclopedias worth of obscure knowledge and his sharp mind allowing him to make observations and connections that would otherwise be missed. We also get a much better insight into the mind of the “bad guy” in this book, though Brown tries so hard to hold onto the character’s secrets that we lose any opportunity of really feeling like we know him, since whatever the hell he’s actually trying to do through the whole book is maddeningly obfuscated.
Moreover, while Brown’s research is impeccable (which isn’t to say I’m ready to buy that it’s all accurate, but he’s certainly a master at finding obscure works of art, artists, locations and historical figures from all over the world and painting a realistic-sounding account of how they’re all tied together, whether or not they actually were), I felt that his narrative suffered in this book. For starters, some of the secrets that he was so carefully trying to keep hidden until the very end jumped out at me fairly early on. One in particular, related to the main bad guy, wasn’t revealed until the final chapters but was clear to me probably a quarter of the way into the book. And I don’t pretend to be all that smart or insightful, I think it was just much more obvious than Brown wanted it to be.
Also, the beginning of the book was lackluster for a lot longer than I can recall Brown’s other books having been. It seemed to take forever for the story to get moving, a complication that I believe was added by the presence of a government official who was much more involved in this book than in the others, but served to slow the pace tremendously as she struggled to insert herself into the story. I clearly remember observing to my wife at least twice that the story seemed to be taking forever to get going. Once it did, it raced along nicely, but I suspect that Brown was experimenting with some things like letting us know the antagonist better and introducing the government official and it didn’t end up working out as well as he might have wanted. Granted, the book has already sold a bazillion copies so I doubt that he’s too upset about it.
There was one other difference between this story and the prior two, but I don’t want to spoil it for those who plan to read this novel but haven’t done so yet. Spoilers follow, so skip the next two paragraphs if you want to read the book as a Lost Symbol virgin:
In the prior two works, Langdon pitted his academic skepticism against religious mysticism and won. In the end, it was clearly reveled that what many took to be magic or divine influence was nothing more than human ritual and genius. In the Lost Symbol, the opposite occurs. We’re introduced to the spiritualism of the Freemasons, who guard the lost secrets of the ancients and their superior understanding of the human mind’s capacity for paranormal expression. Brown ties together the ancient lost secrets guarded by the Masons and the modern science of Noetics, which studies everything from faith healing to the existence of the soul.
And, in a big departure from his earlier works, concludes that the spiritualism is genuine and is on the brink of changing the world. While Langdon, the character, seems to remain at least nominally skeptical, Brown seems to have bought into the idea and ends the book with the world about to learn that “God is inside each of us” and that the mind is able to work miracles. Given the extent to which Brown’s earlier works were bastions of skepticism and secularism, I found the ending of The Lost Symbol more fantastical than I’d expected, and it was a bit jarring. It wasn’t so overt as to feel like a Jehovah’s Witness standing at your door challenging your beliefs (or lack thereof), but it felt a little sneaky primarily because I was expecting the usual humanist, mysticism-free resolution and didn’t get it.
Spoilers complete
Overall, The Lost Symbol is an entertaining and enlightening read. At least, it’s enlightening to whatever extent the information about the Masons and Washington D.C. architecture is factual and unencumbered by artistic license. It makes a solid addition to the Robert Langdon saga, despite starting a bit slowly and involving some elements (ie. the spoilers, above) that struck me as out of place in this series. The book engaged and amused me, which is mostly what I require of a novel, despite its flaws. I rate Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol a solid B.
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