The Argument Continues (with some tips thrown in)
First, because this whole thing about WordPress and Blogger might annoy the crap out of you, or bore you, I’m going to give away some interesting links and information. First is the TW Blog. I’ve become a weekly contributor there, partly because I’ve become a mod at the TeenageWriters site and partly because I’m editing their first anthology. I do the writing tips/discussion type stuff. Two posts of interest to anyone that reads this blog would be The Golden Rule and Enemy #1: Info-dump. The former is about none other than that infamous “show, don’t tell” rule and the latter is quite obvious I think. Check them out because I think they are rather helpful, and perhaps if you have any comments I’d love to hear them. Another thing of interest is that I have volunteered and been accepted to help do book reviews with SQT at her F & SF Review Blog. She’s becoming very active in the SF/F community and trying to get her foot in the review door by asking for ARC’s and the like. She recently sent me an ARC of Ragamuffin by Tobias Buckell and in response I’ve started on Crystal Rain. SQT will be reading Crystal Rain as well and I’ll simply add in my thoughts after she does her review. Ragamuffin is my primary review focus for the moment though, and perhaps other books will show up and I’ll have new things to read. I’m very honored to be a part of this project and would like to thank SQT for letting me join up. It’s something I really want to be able to do, but never new how. Now I have that opportunity. So thanks again SQT! Now for my rant about WordPress and Blogger. I mentioned it earlier that I was considering going to WP. The reason was because WP offers some features that are not available in Blogger and may never be available. So I started researching and playing around with WP and Blogger to see what my limitations of both were. And now I’m at a stalemate on the issue.One of the things I really liked about WP was that it allowed me to have separate pages where I could put links and the like so they don’t clutter my main page. This would allow better organization and such. Blogger doesn’t have this feature. But Blogger allows me to upload for free my own CSS and XML templates and to customize almost without limitations my webpage. I can move columns, etc. WP doesn’t have this feature unless you pay for the CSS function to be added to your free blog, or if you get your own webspace and download the WP PHP set, which means far too much work for me.It would not be an issue for me about switching if I knew that WP had more functionality in regards to their templates, but unfortunately they don’t. In fact, the templates provided by WP are rather bland and boring, which means that despite having those lovely extra pages and uncluttered main pages, I won’t be able to do much to the look of my template other than changing the header image, which is easier to do than in blogger. So I’m in a predicament here. I really would like to have those extra pages. Maybe Blogger is planning to do this, and if they are, I’m sticking around forever. I do like how there are many features built into WP that you have to add to Blogger, but I lose so much functionality in such a trade by not being able to customize the way my blog looks in regards to colors and the like. This is rather annoying to me because WP does have quite the reputation.Another problem is the apparent frequency of WP not working, as in the server is down or some such. I’ve never had this issue with Blogger. Well, that’s not entirely true. Over the course of almost a year Blogger has been down maybe twice, once at a god awful hour that I shouldn’t have been online anyway, and the other was a technical issue. But in the last month of using WP (for the TW blog), I’ve had two separate occasions where the site wouldn’t work or it was horribly slow. Is this common in WP, or am I a fluke? So, to say the least, I’m a little stuck on this issue. I may not be moving any time soon. Likely in the next 3 months or so you might see my blog here at Blogger change significantly from what it is now to something with 3 columns so that I can organize all my stuff. I just wish I could add pages to the site instead. Sigh…
Random Bits and Links of Potential Interest + Ranting Goodness
Thanks for the fan art!Thanks to everyone who has been coming to this blog and thanks Tobias Buckell for actually paying attention to all the times your name pops up on the net and dropping by to leave a comment. That was really cool. And yes I will continue to listen to your Podcast sessions! Now for some other stuff here. I’ve had a lot of thoughts going through my head lately about this blog and about WISB. One of my thoughts involves this newfangled thing called Podcasting. TW has been putting together a Podcast for the site. I don’t know why they thought of doing this, but more power to them. The idea got me thinking about Podcasts and I started Googling them. I had already heard of I Should Be Writing and The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy (which I am listening to now and catching up on), and happened to find this one I previously mentioned called Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing. I thought for a moment that Podcasts were just these dorky things that idiots did that didn’t really amount to anything, and I was completely and thankfully wrong. I’m hooked. It started with Adventures and moved on to Survival Guide and will move to others as well. So, my first idea was this whole Podiobook thing. Podiobooks are basically just audiobooks but in Podcast format. Some damn good authors have done it this way (John Scalzi for example, and I’m sure others too), and I thought of turning WISB into one. This is still only a thought. I don’t know if I’ll ever do it, but it’s such an interesting idea and something that might be a lot of fun. One of the things holding me back is the fact that WISB is young adult fantasy. I would want people to play the various voices of the characters–perhaps some people tripling up–because I certainly could not do a Triska.The other idea involves WordPress. I’ve been with Blogger for almost a year now, but so many writers are going to WordPress because it is such an easy system with a lot of features that Blogger doesn’t have yet, not normally anyway. I don’t know if I’ll move. I’ve noticed that WordPress tends to have more down time than Blogger, but when I look at the features I can use in the standard templates it is somewhat overwhelming. I’ve also got some links of interest.The first is something called Literature Map, which I may or may not have linked before. I’m not entirely sure how it works because I’ve only fiddled around putting author’s names in, but give it a whirl. It gives you authors that might be similar to your entry. For an idea of how amazing William Gibson is, there isn’t a name that really sits close to him on that site. The central idea is that the closer a name is to someone, the more likely you are to like that author in comparison to your original selection. Check it out. I’ve enjoyed it and maybe you’ll find a new author you like! The second link for today is this thing called AutoCrit. Now, I cannot say for certain how well it really works from a literary perspective, but I did enjoy using the free function for it just to see the percentage of usage in some of my writing. Give it a shot. I’m curious how helpful it is to other users. I found it rather interesting and intend to make some use of the free function for a while and perhaps I’ll try the full function some day (which isn’t free of course). That’s all for today. Another chapter should be going up tomorrow I think.
What if Dragons were real?
What would you do if they were real, or had been at one point and perhaps were driven to extinction by all those stories you read about knights fighting dragons and such? What then? With our world being so mysterious and animals thought to be extinct popping up randomly from time to time, could a real, living, breathing dragon come to life?How many of you have ever wondered if dragons truly existed? Or if there were larges lizards that could have caused rise to the dragon myths? And how many of you have sat around hoping to meet a real dragon one day?Well look no further than this image I found some years back taken at some time in 2004.I know what you’re thinking… Is that real? (Well, maybe some of you are thinking it, and some of you are just thinking what a lot of scientists thought when they saw this). No, it isn’t real, but it is possibly the most elaborate hoax in the history of zoological hoaxes from a physical standpoint. Certainly there were hoaxes around Nesse and Big Foot, but none of those hoaxes ever provided something that is as tangible as the image above.It’s not real, but it certainly got people turning heads when it popped up some time ago. Here is the story!
My Obsession With Golden Age Science Fiction
I don’t know what it is about the Golden Age that really attracts me to it. It’s one of the few ‘genres’–if that is what you could call it–that just seems to keep me permanently focused on it. If I see a good deal in a store on some oldies, I pounce on it. This happened this weekend when I found a whole slue of Poul Anderson novels, truly old ones, for a very good price. Needless to say I spent almost 30 dollars on Poul Anderson books. He’s my favorite Golden Age author and could be in my top ten of favorite authors of all time. I have a top ten somewhere on this site, lost in the abyss, but my top tens tend to change from time to time. That’s only natural for such things to occur of course.So, is it perhaps the ‘classical’ aspect of the Golden Age that keeps me coming back? Sort of how a lit. person might be obsessed with the old classics of the Renaissance or the Medieval period. That seems like a good way to look at it, and I think that might be true. I do tend to look at the age of a book and in some cases it might sway me into wanting it. But I’ve noticed that there is this very distinct group of years that sway me this way. If it is before 1935 I likely will lob it into that category of ‘too old’. Those sort of goofy classical works that take on bizarre and unbelievable concepts. Granted, those novels are good, but for some reason novels between 1935 and 1960 seem to truly grasp my attention the most. That is the true Golden Age of science fiction. It’s the period of time when the biggest burst in creative thought in SF truly took place. It’s where great writers like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, and A. E. van Vogt made their names known. That classical–‘vintage’–nature holds me perplexed.So begins my quest. I have decided that my goal in life is to own every science fiction novel ever written and published in the Golden Age. Now, surely this will be an impossible task as many novels may not have been recognized at all. So I’m giving myself leeway. I want to acquire novels that would have been known to some extent. Old Clarke, Asimov, and others whose names I might not be familiar with such as Simak or Surgeon. That is my goal! I’ve started a list of all the novels and short story collections of authors noted to be Golden Age writers. I want all of their works now!If anyone can name off more authors in the Golden Age, please do. One day I want to have a Golden Age library, perhaps not a public one, but a real room that is just a library of Golden Age.
Random News
As the summer winds down I am getting every closer to going to UC Santa Cruz. I went in today to talk about classes and to talk about studying abroad. I’m making moves to go to New Zealand right now and am really excited. How many people get to go to another country to learn? That’s cool in my book.In other news, WISB is going well. I’ve been writing all this weekend, albeit slowly, but writing nonetheless. I’m hoping to get another chapter up this Sunday. We’ll see how that works out of course. My goal is to finish the rest of WISB before Sept. That might not happen, or perhaps it will. We’ll see.Now, as for the TW Anthology, with the days winding down I should start seeing some major involvement from the TW community. There haven’t been hardly any submissions thus far, but that only means, to me, that I could be seeinga LOT of submissions towards the end of the deadline. That frightens me, but if that is the case, so be it. I’ll make it through. In other news, I went book store shopping, as opposed to book shopping, out here in Santa Cruz, where I’ll be living for a few years, and managed to make some amazing finds. I’m a Poul Anderson fanatic and have a hard time finding all his books, and loe and behold at the little used book store in Downtown SC I found a whole load of them for a buck each! I scored 20 or so of his older novels! I’m so excited. My goal is to own every novel he ever wrote!Anywho, I will be back tomorrow afternoon with a more regular post. I’m not sure what is up next. I have a few in draft form right now, so we’ll see what I decide to do.
I Must Apologize…
I am not going to be able to get the chapter up this weekend. I’m trying, but the following is the cause of my inability to write:Yesterday was actually a good day. I drove down with my friend to UCSC to visit the campus. I’ve decided I want to go there. We went, we came back, all was well. The lady at my work had a pair of geckos she wanted me to take from her stepson, so when we got to her house on the way home I went to go get them. One of the geckos had died, so they had buried him, and the second one which they had said was just “a little thin” turned out to be far worse. This is what is causing me grief and preventing me from finishing the chapter (I have 8 pages written…but it’s not enough).This animal is in the worst condition I have ever seen one in. I own 11 of this specific breed (Leopard Gecko) and have had my fair share of issues, but nothing like this, and in fact I would never let it get like this. This is unacceptable in my opinion. The animal has a disease called “Metabolic Bone Disease”, which basically caused deformities in its bones. It also has a lot of other issues which I can’t name, and who knows if it has parasites. Its legs are the shape of U’s. He can walk on them, but barely. His jaw and face are deformed because of a lack of calcium and MBD. He has saggy skin and his tail is just skin and bones. Here is an example, but not nearly as bad as this little fella is, of what a healthy leo should look like, and an unhealthy one:You can obviously guess what a healthy one looks like. The unhealthy one in the picture has MBD. You can see the deformities.The leo I took has swollen shut eyes, one of which it managed to open and looks to have some sort of terrible eye infection. I’m surprised the poor thing can even lift its head.This is what has caused me so much grief in the last 12 hours. I am in a horrible position right now. This animal is suffering. I should put it to sleep. There is a very very very very very x infinity, remote chance this animal could survive, but most doors are looking towards death. I am sick to my stomach thinking about this because I hate the thought of putting animals to sleep. And EVEN MORE SICK to think that this animal shouldn’t have to be because if it had been cared for appropriately, taken to the vet MONTHS–yes months, not days, weeks, but MONTHS–ago it would likely have lived a very healthy life. It’s tearing me up inside because I cannot stand the thought of putting animals to sleep. It hurts so much. I’ve had to do it once and it killed me, but in that instance it wasn’t from neglect. The animal was attacked and I had no choice. This animal was neglected! It was left like this for months to suffer and get in this condition.So I apologize everyone. I will do everything I can to get two chapters up next weekend, or try to get this chapter up in the middle of the week.…