I’ve thought of writing a book a number of times. I’ve thought of interesting plot devices, characters and book covers but never got around to put much more than a few pages down before something else came up. The novel writing for November comes and goes and usually I’m too busy and don’t want to take the time to put something down. This year I went so far as making an outline and describing characters but multiple jobs in diametrically opposed geographic locations from my house did not lend to a lot of writing incentive, especially since the subject did not involve the driving in the Puget Sound area! Even if I did manage to write something that someone could call complete or at least not lacking in content there was the difficult prospect of publishing. That everyone could have such a problem! And, to tell the truth, that was not really anything that was holding me back but it was something that, if I had a guarantee of publishing, or better, a sure guarantee of sales, then that would spur me on.
I admit I’m slow on the uptake – shamefully slower than some, but then, I'm not focused on making money from writing. It's a secondary fringe benefit if it happens; not the primary incentive as it is for some recent book writers. But just recently it finally dawned on me, the way to sell books is to run for President!
Campaigning is a great cover for book sales and you can get campaign contributors to subsidize your travel and speaking engagements. The better you do, the better your sales at least you would think – who wouldn’t want a book signed by president, after all? Well, I suspect, and, so far, current events have borne me out, that book sales must become even greater with a fallen idol than with the idol becoming even more unreal as president. At least that’s one explanation. The other one is that the folks with books for sale, and were actively hawking them (and/or a tv series) were never serious about actually winning the race to begin with! This may be the real explanation especially given the surprise the candidates themselves feel when they find themselves a front-runner. Now, I’m not saying that all presidential candidates that write books are in it for the money rather than the office – some candidates write books to elaborate on their lives and philosophies as a way for the voters to know them better but they seem to be in a very small minority and tend to not be as verbally self-destructive.
Hmm, now considering that one of my writing projects was a love story that was a thinly veiled satire of some of the current evils in our politics today, I’m not sure which way it will go but if you do see me running for President in 2016 (I need time to write and develop an exploratory committee) especially as a Republican, then there’s a safe bet that I’m in it for the sales or maybe I just want to make fun of my fellow candidates.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
Pseudo-Tagging
I hadn't seen it when I first was getting my sea legs on facebook but maybe it was because I didn't have the kinds of friends that were terribly popular ... but now that I do I am seeing an endemic occurence of faux tagging, I suspect (still unconfirmed) that it has been without the informed consent of the tagee. What do I mean by this? Well, for those not familiar with facebook and/or flickr (or other photo sharing/storing sites/software) you can tag someone in a picture by having some software identify a piece of the picture as a face or person and then you "tag" it by saying who that person is.
All well and good. What I've seen happening of late though is pictures that do not have any people on them that are tagged, or advertisements that do not have the person tagged are tagged with their name. Now, I am guessing that some will track the tags down and ask them to be removed (or even remove them themselves though I would concede that this may not always be possible); however, even if they are removed, there is no notification for that is there? I would hope that there was since then I wouldn't have to look at a set of photos that no longer has the tag.
Tagged photos only show up on my facebook because someone that I cared about was tagged in a photo and if they weren't in the photo and it has nothing to do with them, then I feel cheated and think that whoever did this was underhanded and their gimmick is really bound to backfire. It seems like a silly idea anyway - why should I trust any ad that got to me through subterfuge? And, in fact, I am going to avoid these companies like the plague and tell my friends about their misbehavior.
Maybe there is renumeration involved for the hits on the photos, especially the ones with ads, and then I blame the idiots in the advertising or marketing firms that are paying this renumeration without realizing that potential consumers are ready to hit a "You stink" button if one was available before exiting the page. Not the mood that you want to put the customer in. And if the company realizes it but goes along with it, or instigated it itself, then my opinion of them drops even lower.
An even lower use of tagging, which I hope I do not see but could happen is malicious tagging where someone or something is tagged with someone else's moniker on purpose. Misdemeanor? Proving intent? Can I lock my photos so that once tagged no one can add a tag to them? I'm still new enough to this space that I don't know all the answers but I'll work on finding out. I don't want to see anyone a needless victim of mistagging, friend or not.
Now to someone who really wants me to look at something - send me a message!! Don't try to trick me into looking at something that you think is cool but is really not connected with the tagged person. I'm okay with tagging a poster for an event that you are closely involved with but if you tag me for something so that I'll look at it or so that someone else looks at it, then I really wish you would send me a message instead or, if looking for a mass audience, explain what it is via text and why we should take a look at it.
All well and good. What I've seen happening of late though is pictures that do not have any people on them that are tagged, or advertisements that do not have the person tagged are tagged with their name. Now, I am guessing that some will track the tags down and ask them to be removed (or even remove them themselves though I would concede that this may not always be possible); however, even if they are removed, there is no notification for that is there? I would hope that there was since then I wouldn't have to look at a set of photos that no longer has the tag.
Tagged photos only show up on my facebook because someone that I cared about was tagged in a photo and if they weren't in the photo and it has nothing to do with them, then I feel cheated and think that whoever did this was underhanded and their gimmick is really bound to backfire. It seems like a silly idea anyway - why should I trust any ad that got to me through subterfuge? And, in fact, I am going to avoid these companies like the plague and tell my friends about their misbehavior.
Maybe there is renumeration involved for the hits on the photos, especially the ones with ads, and then I blame the idiots in the advertising or marketing firms that are paying this renumeration without realizing that potential consumers are ready to hit a "You stink" button if one was available before exiting the page. Not the mood that you want to put the customer in. And if the company realizes it but goes along with it, or instigated it itself, then my opinion of them drops even lower.
An even lower use of tagging, which I hope I do not see but could happen is malicious tagging where someone or something is tagged with someone else's moniker on purpose. Misdemeanor? Proving intent? Can I lock my photos so that once tagged no one can add a tag to them? I'm still new enough to this space that I don't know all the answers but I'll work on finding out. I don't want to see anyone a needless victim of mistagging, friend or not.
Now to someone who really wants me to look at something - send me a message!! Don't try to trick me into looking at something that you think is cool but is really not connected with the tagged person. I'm okay with tagging a poster for an event that you are closely involved with but if you tag me for something so that I'll look at it or so that someone else looks at it, then I really wish you would send me a message instead or, if looking for a mass audience, explain what it is via text and why we should take a look at it.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Tweeting
I started tweeting a month ago, maybe it was 2 months ago; and I really can't say that I stuck with it, I didn't. Tweeting was the fast lane and I was still learning to drive comfortably with my relatively small number of friends on Facebook. My wife, on the other hand, is atwitter with tweeting and wants me to be more active.
I am thinking of exactly how a mildly malicious or prevaricated message could be construed as a 'twick' (such as the crawling gnat here) so that for halloween I can offer folks the choice of "twick or tweet" but I do not think that she'll be amused at that.
Currently I have only a handful of followers - what if I mistweet something and lose them as well? That's not a good way to build a following. No, what I need is a gimmick and I decided that my gimmick will be "gumbah" which should mean "winner" in some language but probably translates to "loser" in many of the more common ones. Still,it is worth a try ... sadly, ironically, and humorously, there's a real possibility that it would be very successful in the sense that I would end up attracting a lot of people that are interested in the form but not the content.
All I can say is "gumbah".
I am thinking of exactly how a mildly malicious or prevaricated message could be construed as a 'twick' (such as the crawling gnat here) so that for halloween I can offer folks the choice of "twick or tweet" but I do not think that she'll be amused at that.
Currently I have only a handful of followers - what if I mistweet something and lose them as well? That's not a good way to build a following. No, what I need is a gimmick and I decided that my gimmick will be "gumbah" which should mean "winner" in some language but probably translates to "loser" in many of the more common ones. Still,it is worth a try ... sadly, ironically, and humorously, there's a real possibility that it would be very successful in the sense that I would end up attracting a lot of people that are interested in the form but not the content.
All I can say is "gumbah".
Tuning
One of my favorite parts of a orchestral performance is when the orchestra goes through the tuning ritual; the last minute adjustments, the preparation to play in harmony and to become a single organism.
I'm not sure that the orchestra members would appreciate the comparison, but it brought to mind the enigmatic slime mold, a bunch of individuals that come together and specialize to create a greater organism and I imagine that this assemblage must be similar in its initial cacaphony of cells of who's playing what part and sitting where, only without a conductor to tell them where to sit or what instrument they're to play. Maybe that's why the conductor is usually absent during this stage where individuals become a collective organism - it is the organism that the conductor is really talking to, maybe major muscle groups but not the individual cells.
I haven't heard other animals tuning and wonder if this is a human endeavor since we're making a group musical effort or whether I've just missed hearing it. There would be nothing against collectively adding volume for mating calls for instance say a couple of frogs singing together might attract relatively more mates than one on its lonesome and that seems to be the case with birds as well. But still, I don't recall hearing the tuning before birds start their warbling in earnest, nor frogs their croaking but then again I haven't heard them singing in harmony or even in time with one another.
I do miss hearing that part of the performance on recordings, the part where there are still egos being subsumed into the collective vision of composer, conductor and orchestra members; where there is still a whisper of the individual artists before they become greater than the sum of their musical parts. Please mention to any recording artists and engineer friends of yours to please, please include the tuning with an ensemble recording.
I'm not sure that the orchestra members would appreciate the comparison, but it brought to mind the enigmatic slime mold, a bunch of individuals that come together and specialize to create a greater organism and I imagine that this assemblage must be similar in its initial cacaphony of cells of who's playing what part and sitting where, only without a conductor to tell them where to sit or what instrument they're to play. Maybe that's why the conductor is usually absent during this stage where individuals become a collective organism - it is the organism that the conductor is really talking to, maybe major muscle groups but not the individual cells.
I haven't heard other animals tuning and wonder if this is a human endeavor since we're making a group musical effort or whether I've just missed hearing it. There would be nothing against collectively adding volume for mating calls for instance say a couple of frogs singing together might attract relatively more mates than one on its lonesome and that seems to be the case with birds as well. But still, I don't recall hearing the tuning before birds start their warbling in earnest, nor frogs their croaking but then again I haven't heard them singing in harmony or even in time with one another.
I do miss hearing that part of the performance on recordings, the part where there are still egos being subsumed into the collective vision of composer, conductor and orchestra members; where there is still a whisper of the individual artists before they become greater than the sum of their musical parts. Please mention to any recording artists and engineer friends of yours to please, please include the tuning with an ensemble recording.
Typing
You know the adage about "Old dogs learning new tricks"? Well, I'm in the position of being an old dog relearning mislearned tricks ... i.e. typing.
Now, to say I'm a poor typist is both harsh and an understatement; [I thought] I knew where the fingers were supposed to go and was working on typing games and tests and was up to a wopping 40 wpm ... then, when using the lessons to increase my speed, I realized that for both hands I was off by one (for each finger)! This is tougher than if I had started from scratch since I have habit-breaking on top of learning the right way. Granted, there is some synergy between the two so the burden isn't entirely additive, but still significantly more than learning from scratch. I'm guessing that this is analogous to relearning some techniques on musical instruments when one teacher decides that the student is doing the fingering in a way that gets in the way of further development. I am looking at it that way. I am also getting myself some voice-to-text software. If there was some decent acoustic-to-music notation software I would get that as well to save myself some potential expense in the piano/violin/sitar lessons or the fun of teaching myself with the very real hazard of having to relearn the right way later at a greater expense.
If only I was put in the front of the class or fixed up with a mentoring student when I took a typing class, rather than shunted to the back with another student who did equally poorly ... better to teach young pups correctly and make sure they have it down the first time rather than have them repeat mistakes over years.
Now, to say I'm a poor typist is both harsh and an understatement; [I thought] I knew where the fingers were supposed to go and was working on typing games and tests and was up to a wopping 40 wpm ... then, when using the lessons to increase my speed, I realized that for both hands I was off by one (for each finger)! This is tougher than if I had started from scratch since I have habit-breaking on top of learning the right way. Granted, there is some synergy between the two so the burden isn't entirely additive, but still significantly more than learning from scratch. I'm guessing that this is analogous to relearning some techniques on musical instruments when one teacher decides that the student is doing the fingering in a way that gets in the way of further development. I am looking at it that way. I am also getting myself some voice-to-text software. If there was some decent acoustic-to-music notation software I would get that as well to save myself some potential expense in the piano/violin/sitar lessons or the fun of teaching myself with the very real hazard of having to relearn the right way later at a greater expense.
If only I was put in the front of the class or fixed up with a mentoring student when I took a typing class, rather than shunted to the back with another student who did equally poorly ... better to teach young pups correctly and make sure they have it down the first time rather than have them repeat mistakes over years.
The French Press
While in Mexico City and in Nice, the coffee maker that we had in the hotel room was not your typical mini-Mr. Coffee but a small packet of coffee and a french press. Since my wife already had the kettle on for tea and, being an addict of the stuff, what choice did I have? It was particularly flavorful and I was pleasantly surprised given the small amount of coffee. On our return, for my birthday, I got myself a French press and have not gone back to the automatic filter based machine. It provides a more flavorful coffee in a smaller volume than the automatic coffee maker and has several other advantages:
1. No filter
2. We already have a receptacle that retains hot water for tea so no extra step is needed for this.
3. The coffee can brew longer
4. It's easier to clean
That said, my wife decided to up the ante and got a stove top espresso pot where you put the water in the bottom, it boils and goes up through the grounds into a receptacle in the top ... I'm not exactly sure how this is different from a percolator, maybe the direction of flow of water/steam through the grounds but it tastes very good. My qualms with this are: smaller volume, water needs to be heated (though should be able to use the 195 F water we already have), cleaning slightly more complicated, and I was just really settling in with the french press and within a couple weeks this comes along!
Sigh, ain't that the way.
1. No filter
2. We already have a receptacle that retains hot water for tea so no extra step is needed for this.
3. The coffee can brew longer
4. It's easier to clean
That said, my wife decided to up the ante and got a stove top espresso pot where you put the water in the bottom, it boils and goes up through the grounds into a receptacle in the top ... I'm not exactly sure how this is different from a percolator, maybe the direction of flow of water/steam through the grounds but it tastes very good. My qualms with this are: smaller volume, water needs to be heated (though should be able to use the 195 F water we already have), cleaning slightly more complicated, and I was just really settling in with the french press and within a couple weeks this comes along!
Sigh, ain't that the way.
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