Mark Bernstein: NeoVictorian 1: Civilization and its Discontents

Interesting first shot by Mark Bernstein, with promises for more:
Mark Bernstein: NeoVictorian 1: Civilization and its Discontents

Why do I say we are unhappy?

• Our scientific conferences are filled with papers that focus on incremental improvements observed when asking unskilled laborers (whom we call “novices”) to perform office chores. We call this “usability”.
• Scholars interested in arts and humanities computing are strangely obsessed with box office and weirdly uninterested in making software, or making meaning.

I’m looking forward to more…

NaNoWriMo Technology Suggestions

Took a look at this thread over on the geared up NaNoWriMo.org site and figured I’d write down my favorite tech suggestions.

It’s basically culling my tools from this post, as well as a few of the general tools from this post:

Writer.app for drafting, Tinderbox and OmniOutliner for thought organization and outlining, Mellel for general word processor formatting when I’m at that stage of the process.

Not that I’ll be doing much during November other than being spit up on, not sleeping, and changing nappies.

Updates a-go-go

While we’re all waiting around for the next baby to be born…

Q.I. Software‘s been busy, updating both useful services (ContactCreator and CalendarCreator) to Universal Binary, so they’ll run happily on your shiny Intel Macs to your crusty old PPC Macs.

And Writer.app 1.2.5 is out with a little bug fix for those recent items you’d been working on not opening. Opening it up to play with it and test yesterday reminded me what a great environment it is to write in… just the basics, ma’am… no distractions, just type. Make a mistake, just keep typing. It’s a great feeling. I think the next few Sane issues’ll be written back in Writer.app.

Cameragate

My favorite take on the whole thing thus far:

• Each one of Asante Samuel’s dreadlocks is a stick of dynamite.

• Tom Brady can burn through locks with his smoldering eyes.

• The apostrophe in Donte’ Stallworth’s name is actually is a listening device.

• Vince Wilfork conceals a surveillance van underneath his jersey.

• Former wide receiver Reche Caldwell’s eyeballs were actually surveillance cameras, but like his hands, they malfunctioned in the AFC Championship Game.

And I think that’s the last story I’ll bother reading about this. At least the Boston Sports Media Machine will have something to write about for a little while (not to mention the rest of the national sports media).

COTGM: Red Sox Offer Women the Opportunity to Give Birth at Fenway Park

Call of the Green Monster: Red Sox Offer Women the Opportunity to Give Birth at Fenway Park:

“The only tricky thing about this is that women traditionally need to spend a couple of days in the hospital after giving birth, but we’ll be requiring them to leave the park within one hour of the child’s birth, or we’ll be forced to bill them for an additional 25 grand,” Lucchino noted. “Time is money, and we can’t have some happy young couple getting married in one part of the field, while a woman is resting after giving birth nearby. So, once the child is born, they can just call a cab, and there are several hospitals nearby. It’s a magnificent opportunity.”

Awesome. I just need to convince L now…

Destiny Calling

“Destiny Calling” (James - The Best of James - Destiny Calling) came on the old iTunes today… I don’t know what it is about this piece of music, but it sets off something… well, I was going to say literary, but maybe we’ll call it “something of the writerly mind.” Well, that also sounds lame. In fact, admitting to liking James and that particular song may make me lame. I have no idea, really, if it’s cool to like them or not. All I know is I saw their last concert before Tim Booth left the band, and they were one of the best live performances I’ve ever seen.

It’s one of those songs that just sets off a whole slew of memories of living in that dingy little third (fourth) floor apartment in Brooklyn with the writing desk gotten from the guy down the block who claimed to have been good friends with Miles Davis and always alluded to something… something with the Black Panthers and even Mike Tyson. Nizam was his name. Interesting guy. Memories of working on (and finishing) that first novel, walking across Atlantic Ave that one morning to get to the subway station and nearly being blown down the street by violent gusts of wind. The heat breaking on a lonely New Years Eve in front of the television, piled high with blankets and a mild cold due to the aforementioned broken heating system. The cockroaches, soon to be scared off by the cat from hell my roommates brought home. Typing on that PowerBook 1400 (I didn’t know that off the top of my head, I had to look it up). Returning home from my first trip to London, having finished “Timequake” (Kurt Vonnegut) on the flight back to JFK, dropping my bags in my bedroom, turning on the CD player with that James CD, powering up the PowerBook, running in, having a shower with the apartment empty, “Destiny Calling” blasting, and having to cut it short to dash out and write the story, “Destiny Calling, (PDF link)” right there and then.

At any rate, why am I telling you this? I suppose it’s because I’ve a sort of fresh reaction to the song because I just recently saw the theme of music on a writing prompt site (you may need to reload a few times to get it to come up – the gist of it is about letting the song in your head, or the first one that comes to mind be your muse). What’s the song that’s gotten you going?

Sane Magazine is out this week – Elaborate Rookie Hazing of Matsuzaka Getting Out of Hand

Since I’ve been thumbing through the author’s copy of “Further Fenway Fiction: More Short Stories from Red Sox Nation” (Pachter Adam), it seems baseball must have been on my mind.

This week’s Sane is about the rookie hazing campaign that’s been going on over the last few starts for poor Daisuke Matsuzaka. Well, “poor” isn’t entirely accurate, but you know what I meant.

The new iHoroscopes are announced, at long last, the new tshirts designs, too, and it’s all just a very packed issue this week. Go on over and check it out.

A wombat, the sink, and how it got there