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| Thursday, July 29th, 2010 | | 8:50 am |
Well, that quiz was way too long... I Am A: Lawful Neutral Elf Wizard (4th Level) Ability Scores:Strength-13 Dexterity-12 Constitution-13 Intelligence-15 Wisdom-11 Charisma-12 ( More details... ) | | Thursday, November 5th, 2009 | | 6:56 am |
Science Writing Competition - Vote for Me!
Did you ever wonder what the Mars Science Laboratory Rover has in common with James Bond? Well, wonder no more because I have written a full blog post about it! The post qualified as a finalist in scientificblogging.com's science writing competition, so if you like it please vote for it by clicking the grey widget to the right of the title. You can vote once per day until the 23rd so tell all your friends to check it out and vote all month! Thanks!  | | Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 | | 9:41 am |
Your result for Which fantasy writer are you?...
Ursula K Le Guin (b. 1929)1 High-Brow, -11 Violent, -5 Experimental and 17 Cynical! 
Congratulations! You are High-Brow, Peaceful, Traditional and Cynical! These concepts are defined below. Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is definitely one of the most celebrated science fiction and fantasy writers of all times. Her most famous fantasy work to date is the Earthsea suite of novels and short stories, in which Le Guin created not only one of the most believable societies in fantasy fiction, but also managed to describe a school for wizards almost three decades before Harry Potter. Although often categorized as written for young adults, these books have entertained and challenged readers of all ages since their publication. Le Guin is no stranger to literary experiments (see for example Always Coming Home(1985)), but much of her story-telling is quite traditional. In fact, she makes a point of returning to older forms of story-telling, which, at her best, enables her to create something akin to myth. One shouldn't confuse myth with faerytale, though. Nothing is ever simplified in Le Guin's world, as she relentlessly explores ethical problems and the moral choices that her characters must make, as must we all. While being one of those writers who will allow you to escape to imaginary worlds, she is also one who will prompt you to return to your actual life, perhaps a little wiser than you used to be. You are also a lot like Susan Cooper. If you want some action, try Michael Moorcock. If you'd like a challenge, try your exact opposite, C S Lewis. Your score This is how to interpret your score: Your attitudes have been measured on four different scales, called 1) High-Brow vs. Low-Brow, 2) Violent vs. Peaceful, 3) Experimental vs. Traditional and 4) Cynical vs. Romantic. Imagine that when you were born, you were in a state of innocence, a tabula rasa who would have scored zero on each scale. Since then, a number of circumstances (including genetical, cultural and environmental factors) have pushed you towards either end of these scales. If you're at 45 or -45 you would be almost entirely cynical, low-brow or whatever. The closer to zero you are, the less extreme your attitude. However, you should always be more of either (eg more romantic than cynical). Please note that even though High-Brow, Violent, Experimental and Cynical have positive numbers (1 through 45) and their opposites negative numbers (-1 through -45), this doesn't mean that either quality is better. All attitudes have their positive and negative sides, as explained below. High-Brow vs. Low-Brow You received 1 points, making you more High-Brow than Low-Brow. Being high-browed in this context refers to being more fascinated with the sort of art that critics and scholars tend to favour, rather than the best-selling kind. At their best, high-brows are cultured, able to appreciate the finer nuances of literature and not content with simplifications. At their worst they are, well, snobs. Violent vs. Peaceful You received -11 points, making you more Peaceful than Violent. This scale is a measurement of a) if you are tolerant to violence in fiction and b) whether you see violence as a means that can be used to achieve a good end. If you aren't, and you don't, then you are peaceful as defined here. At their best, peaceful people are the ones who encourage dialogue and understanding as a means of solving conflicts. At their worst, they are standing passively by as they or third parties are hurt by less scrupulous individuals. Experimental vs. Traditional You received -5 points, making you more Traditional than Experimental. Your position on this scale indicates if you're more likely to seek out the new and unexpected or if you are more comfortable with the familiar, especially in regards to culture. Note that traditional as defined here does not equal conservative, in the political sense. At their best, traditional people don't change winning concepts, favouring storytelling over empty poses. At their worst, they are somewhat narrow-minded. Cynical vs. Romantic You received 17 points, making you more Cynical than Romantic. Your position on this scale indicates if you are more likely to be wary, suspicious and skeptical to people around you and the world at large, or if you are more likely to believe in grand schemes, happy endings and the basic goodness of humankind. It is by far the most vaguely defined scale, which is why you'll find the sentence "you are also a lot like x" above. If you feel that your position on this scale is wrong, then you are probably more like author x. At their best, cynical people are able to see through lies and spot crucial flaws in plans and schemes. At their worst, they are overly negative, bringing everybody else down. Author picture from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UrsulaLeGuin.01.jpg
Take Which fantasy writer are you? at HelloQuizzy
| | Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 | | 10:13 pm |
Engaged!
In case you missed the announcement on Facebook and/or Twitter, Erin and I got engaged over the weekend! It's finally starting to sink in; at first I had to keep telling myself that yes I did just ask Erin to marry me, and she said yes, and we announced it to our parents and friends. In fact, the whole process reminded me of skydiving. The scariest part is the couple weeks beforehand where you run through the scenario over and over. Then, the day comes and you're surprisingly calm, with occasional stomach butterflies. And then all of a sudden, you're committed to your course of action. For skydiving, it was getting in the plane. For the proposal, I wrote out the key events in our three years together as a sort of story/journal with the proposal at the end, so once I started reading, it was inevitable. And then you jump out of the plane and everything goes into slow motion, and your brain is just repeating "yes, that really just happened. You just jumped out of a plane. Holy crap." But then she says "yes" and the parachute works and you make it to solid ground and it's a wonderful feeling, and you call people and tell them that you just survived skydiving/got engaged. That's where the analogy breaks down, because with skydiving that's it, but with an engagement, that's just the beginning. Another reason that I like that analogy is that it reminds me of a quote I read three years ago when I was debating whether or not to start dating Erin: If we listened to our intellect we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go in business because we’d be cynical: “It’s gonna go wrong.” Or “She’s going to hurt me.” Or,”I’ve had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . .” Well, that’s nonsense. You’re going to miss life. You’ve got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down. -Ray Bradbury | | Thursday, April 9th, 2009 | | 10:26 pm |
| | 7:44 am |
Epic
So, I just started reading the epic fantasy novel "Acacia" by David Anthony Durham. It's quite well written, and I'm enjoying it so far, but I've been struck by two things. First, it follows a pretty standard epic fantasy plot: assassin murders the king, then the story follows the king's kids as they try to deal with all the fallout. It's fine that he's using this plot because it's a pretty effective one, and a pretty plausible one. The second thing that I noticed is that this is essentially the story that I was trying to write for NaNoWriMo last year. In both stories, the king is killed. In both stories there are foreign invaders to make things worse. In both stories, the plot closely follows the king's kids. They're not identical stories, but the similarities are striking. Heck, I just read a chapter where the prince gets beaten during military training. I wrote a chapter like that!! So, on the one hand: cool, my story is similar to one that was published and is getting lots of praise! On the other hand: *cliche alert*! I like epic fantasy, but I don't just want to re-write the same story. I haven't been too excited about finishing the edits to my NaNovel lately. A lot of that has been busy-ness, but also despite all the work I've put into it, it's not really coming to life for me. I have some new ideas bouncing around, so maybe it's time to set the NaNovel aside and start thinking about other stories... | | Monday, April 6th, 2009 | | 9:44 pm |
Know what I think is interesting? How important connotations are for words. As in, the word itself has a definition, but it also conjures up all sorts of other images and ideas in your brain, and when you're reading, all of that comes into play, not just the strict definitions. This is something I really should keep in mind when I write (which hasn't been very often lately...). In case you're wondering why I'm thinking about this, it's a bizarre combination of this blog post's title (which is awesome), and the fact that I've been reading about neural networks, and something that Juliette Wade posted about on her blog a while back. In particular, I think it's impressive how the awesome title of that first blog post is really vivid and poetic (at least to me), and it's all because of the various associations that words like "wounded" and "sing" have in my brain. I can just picture all the subtle links to those words in my brain lighting up when I read that title. The result is a lot more than the literal interpretation of the words (which actually would be almost nonsense). This is the same reason that similes and metaphors can be so powerful when used well. Anyway, cool stuff. | | Sunday, March 29th, 2009 | | 12:07 am |
| | Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 | | 8:40 pm |
Done with the "marking up the manuscript and writing notes in a notebook" step of editing! Now comes the "figure out how to make all those changes work together" step, and the "actually writing the second draft" step. So, I'm making progress but there's a long way to go. | | Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 | | 9:06 pm |
Three chapters left to mark up on my novel: one for each main character. Then I get to start the daunting process of going back and actually making the changes that I've been scribbling in the margins. I'm finding the hardest part of writing a novel is keeping everything in mind all at once. I will probably take some time before diving into the rewriting to work up new character sheets and also make "reminder cards" for each main character to remind me to keep certain things in mind throughout that character's chapters. Also, hey about that day job I have! I've been working on a program that lets me click on points in an image, finds the elevation at those points and fits a plane to them, calculating the orientation of the plane with appropriate error bars. This is important when you're studying layered rocks like I am because the tilt can tell you about the structure of the sediment stack, and possibly its origin and history. Now that I have my program working I have to face the task of actually doing... science. Scary! On the plus side, I get to spend a lot of time looking at HiRISE images of Gale crater now, and HiRISE is always fun, what with the 30cm per pixel resolution. Hooray for spy satellites around other planets! | | Saturday, February 14th, 2009 | | 5:21 pm |
After a long break from flash challenges at Liberty Hall, I entered last weekend and won! Not a bad start! I think NaNo and editing have really helped my writing, or maybe I just got lucky with the trigger, but I felt much less rushed than I used to during flashes. As for the Desiderata challenge, I don't think I have time to finish it by tuesday. I'll hang on to what I have in case I feel like working on it again sometime. Novel editing has been on hold while I did challenge related stuff, but I only have a handful of chapters left (maybe 6?). And then I can start the actual re-writing, which I'm looking forward to but also dreading a bit. I may spend some time on more world building before diving into the rewrite... we'll see. | | Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 | | 8:02 pm |
Worked on the Liberty Hall "Ad-Hoc Challenge" tonight rather than the novel. The challenge is to write the best story arc based on the Desiderata(see below). One short-short per stanza, all of which are somehow connected to create an overall story arc. I wrote the first stanza's story tonight, and have some idea where I want to go with the rest of them. If I can do one per night that will leave some time to touch it up before the deadline, and then I can get back to editing the novel. Here's the Desiderata in case you're wondering: ( Read more... ) | | Friday, January 30th, 2009 | | 11:16 pm |
| | Saturday, January 24th, 2009 | | 10:48 am |
Edited another chapter today. Blah. I think I've hit the point where my initial quasi-detailed outline stopped, and I started winging it. Today's chapter also needs to be mostly re-written. I remember how crappy it seemed when I was writing it, but it was NaNo so I just moved on. Now the worst parts of the story are the ones that I need to spend a lot of time with and it ain't fun. I think the key is to just keep plugging through so that I can reach the end, see how the story actually turns out and start with the re-writing. | | Monday, January 19th, 2009 | | 9:30 pm |
Two more chapters edited tonight, one of which will probably have to be re-written when I go back through and make the edits. News flash: writing a battle scene doesn't make it an exciting scene! I think I have figured out how to make it a more character centered (and therefore far more interesting) chapter, but it's going to mean a major overhaul of the chapter. | | Sunday, January 18th, 2009 | | 9:45 pm |
Today I went skiing and discovered that fresh snow leads to moguls rather quickly. Luckily they were still puffy and all my falls were non-painful. I have a long way to go before I can really manage moguls. After skiing, we came home, collapsed in exhaustion, and after an excellent nap, ate some delicious stew that we made yesterday. And then I got two more chapters of the novel edited! Editing is still fun, though it's getting slower as I try to tie things together and leave more notes for myself. I've been working to incorporate more of the religions into the story because with an Inca-based culture coming into contact with a european "crusader" type culture it really needs to permeate everything the characters do, on both sides. The most difficult scene today was the beginning of an uneasy alliance between the two sides that I think needs a lot more work. Anyway, it's been a pretty darn good weekend. | | Saturday, January 17th, 2009 | | 3:48 pm |
Battlestar Follow-up
There's an interesting discussion of last night's Battlestar episode over at tor.com, and they voice some of the frustrations that I was trying to with my previous post. Here's an excerpt (spoilers, duh): "I can’t help but try to fit BSG into an actual possible future, rather than some alternate-timeline future, or some Star Wars-esque thing. Since the Colonies talk about Greek gods and use all these other real world cultural references, and they do acknowledge that such a place as Earth exists, I feel like it *must* be set in a real-world possible future—otherwise the creators have stacked the deck with wild cards and we don’t know what the rules of the game are. So because of this line of thinking, I’m having trouble trying to make sense of everything that’s going on. And also, because I’m a rationalist, and since BSG uses the furniture of science fiction, I’m assuming that they live in a rational universe, and so am assuming that there’s some prosaic explanation for all the seemingly paranormal activity that’s going on. But—it’s getting harder and harder to see how any prosaic explanation will make sense." | | 8:19 am |
| | Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 | | 8:46 am |
Editing
So far I'm through Chapter 10 of the novel, reading and marking it up with notes and corrections. I'm doing all of this first so that I don't spend time perfecting a scene only to realize later on that it needs to be changed again. As I get deeper into the story I'm finding that I have to flip back to earlier chapters and jot more notes like "make sure to mention that this character learns the language so they can speak it in chapter 8!" I even had to swap the order of two chapters to make things work. (A fairly major revelation occurs in chapter 10 but is referred to in chapter 9...) I discovered yesterday that a character that I totally forgot about could be combined with one that I inserted sort of randomly, which will be interesting to fix throughout the rest of the book, but I think will make it work better. I'm also finding that a lot of plot is concentrated in a few chapters, while others, though not boring, are not such tipping points. I'll have to wait until I've actually made the corrections, but some of the plot-heavy chapters may have to be expanded... I think once these edits are made the novel will be in much better shape. It will still need another round like this, but it's coming along. It's pretty fun, once I get up the energy to start. I actually don't know how many chapters there are in the book because I lost count during NaNo and stopped numbering, but I did roughly one per day so that means I'm about a third of the way through right now. | | Saturday, December 6th, 2008 | | 6:03 pm |
Magical Mystery Tour!
I spent today in the library, doing the "Magical Mystery Tour" assignment for my medieval romances class in lieu of a paper. The prof provides a list of a dozen or so "tasks" to do in the library, and you have to complete seven of them. Some are simple like "Find the strangest book in the medieval studies room. Be nice to the medieval studies grad students you meet there, they are sensitive about what people think of them." Other tasks are more complicated, like "go to the rare manuscript collection and look at three illuminated manuscripts (or their facsimilies) and comment on aspects of the illumination that please you." Most of the tour was uneventful, but the rare manuscripts were way cool. Two of the were facsimilies, but one was the genuine article! It came with a leater-bound wood case with a lock, and was made of leather and parchment. I had to wear little white gloves to touch it, and it even smelled old! It was a spanish text from 1563, and some of the illuminations were amazingly detailed. Just as interesting was that at the end, a different author started writing with much slopier, hastier handwriting, and the last couple of pages are all in this new hand rather than the careful calligraphy of the rest of the book. Anyway, that was pretty neat, and much easier than writing a paper. Here's a picture of the first page of the manuscript I looked at:  |
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