Tag Archives: Writing

Dr. L’Ling by Minus the Bear

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Today’s song was discovered via Chris, who linked me to Drilling P.O.S. REDO by Minus the Bear over at Suicide Squeeze Records. While a good song, it got me curious about the band, so I ended up browsing through the site, and found a song that I ended up liking more: “Dr. L’Ling”, which is from their new album, Planet of Ice, which is due out in mid-August.

“Dr. L’Ling” starts out quiet, with an undulating, droning guitar, then adding a staccato drum, before kicking up to full volume with another, lightly distorted guitar that is vaguely reminiscient of “Creep” by Radiohead’s heavy pre-chorus thrash. The vocals aren’t entirely my cup of tea, but don’t really detract from the overall mood of the song, which mixes a sense of urgency with a vaguely ethereal, “space-y” vibe. (“Space-y” is perhaps a bit hard to describe, but you know it when you hear it, much like ProjeKct Two’s Space Groove.) The guitar work in particular really explores the space of the song, mixing melodic long notes with a rapid, abrupt progression that reminded me heavily of “Discipline” by King Crimson. The song finally winds down with more undulation fading into the distance, which gives the total song a mental image of a space patrol, idling along, called to duty, and then returning to its long quiet patrol.

Overall, it’s an engaging song, and I really don’t mind adding it to my musical library. I’ll look forward to hearing more from this band, and see where their musical evolution takes them in their latest album.

[Dr. L’Ling by Minus the Bear]

[Minus the Bear at Suicide Squeeze Records]

Invisible by Modest Mouse

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I think it will come as no surprise to most folks familiar with both me and the band that I’m a fan of Modest Mouse. I was initially turned on to them fairly late in their career, with their album Good News for People Who Love Bad News, notably their one-two punch of “World At Large” followed by “Float On,” which when combined, served as a personal mantra and definition through a very trying period in my life. I quickly rounded out my collection of their prior albums, and eagerly anticipated their latest album, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. The new album, while not exceeding my preference for Good News…, does not disappoint, with its frenetic, impassioned songs. Needless to say, I was glad to see one of these songs, “Invisible”, show up on KEXP’s Song of the Day Podcast.

“Invisible” starts with a muted drum and guitar build up, which then explodes into a sonic crescendo as the singing starts. Build-up and release seems to be a recurring theme within the song, with several points where the melody builds a sense of urgency before a staccato release of heavy, directed drums and guitar, with a bassline running throughout acting as a glue, bonding the elements together.

In short, the song rocks, and rocks hard. It engages the ear on several levels in a way that could be overwhelming if not prepared for it, combined with a pacing that can’t help but encourage a frenetic mood in the listener. “Invisible” is an excellent example of Modest Mouse’s musical style, and would be a great way to introduce the band musically to a newcomer.

[Invisible by Modest Mouse]

[Subscribe to the KEXP Song of the Day Podcast.]

Apple Pie by The Bastard Fairies

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“I’m the life of the party, I’m always smiling. On the surface, I’m as happy as can be.”

You all know the people “Apple Pie” (off The Bastard Fairies’ Memento Mori) is talking about: they seem upbeat and cheerful (much like this song), but the reality is that they’re fairly shallow, and avoid dealing with their emotions, or anything too heavy or serious. It describes an individual who is shallow by choice. The mood and melody of the song encourages this image, with a relatively simple tune running through it, with only the chorus having more complexity and layers: for most of the song, it is simply a synth and lo-fi vocals. With each cycle through the chorus, however, they add more and more instruments, until the final chorus is a diverse cacophany of sounds that works well in a sonic fashion. This ties really well into the metaphor of the song, since you never run into these sorts of people alone.

I like this song, for several reasons. First and foremost, it’s a catchy tune, with a simple rhythm and lyrics that are easy to sing along to — it’s easy to end up nodding your head with the beat or even singing along. In particular when I was first introduced to this song via KEXP, I was dealing with several individuals that I found I was immediately identifying with the song: not bad people, but emotionally shallow, who’d rather sweep things under the rug than address the issues at hand. This gave it enough weight that I ended up tracking down the band online, where I discovered that they were offering their entire album available for download, free (links below). I’d definitely recommend looking them up, and giving the album a few listens, to see if it’s something you might like: especially for the price, it’s worth your time.

[“Apple Pie” [Free MP3]]

[The Bastard Fairies Website]

Some Days You’re Busy

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Nabil in November 06…and some days, you’re just a bum.

May has been a weak writing month so far, for no discernable reason. A good chunk of the first half of the month was spent working nearly every day — good for the wallet, bad for writing. This week, however, I’m not sure if I’ll be working at all: the problem with this testing gig (other than low pay and no benefits) is that it’s as-needed, and sometimes projects simply don’t time out to give steady work. There may be a shift starting on Wednesday, but in the meantime, that means Monday and Tuesday are something of a wash. I managed to get some errands done today, and tomorrow is supposed to be beautiful and warm, so I’m hoping to go out and enjoy it.

Saturday morning, I got up and headed south to Portland, where I helped my friend Adam move one of his friends into her new place… we got back north about 4am, so a kind of long day, but it was fun and good nevertheless. It felt good to get out and doing something with other people. Timing unfortunately didn’t work out to catch up with Dan, but hopefully I’ll manage to track him down some other weekend.

I’ve been doing a bit of reading about HDR photography, and decided to experiment a bit with some of my existing work… I already take doubles and triples of a lot of my shots, so I figured it’d be reasonable to find at least a few sets that would be suitable (the best way to create an HDR image is to set your camera to do exposure bracketing, and do multiple shots at multiple exposures… 3-9 shots at different exposures should give you a nice range… tripods are practically a must). In the process or sifting around, I found my shots from spending Thanksgiving down with Claire and her family in Williamsburg, VA. I miss her like crazy.

I tend not to talk much on this blog about the personal stuff — I’ll bore you to death with mundane shit and idle references, but when it comes to personal interactions, they at most get a mention. This is entirely intentional, and has nothing to do with wanting to avoid being “emo” or any other similar poseur bullshit. It comes down to the fact that it’s personal and private. Sometimes I think I shut it down a bit too much, though, so let me open up a little bit: this past fall, I wasn’t exactly in the best frame of mind, and several events transpired that exacerbated it — in short, I was a trainwreck. I ended up relying heavily on Claire for support and a receptive ear, which put a lot of extra stress on her. Things started to fall apart, and ended back in January with her decision to cut off all contact. This is largely my own damned fault, and you’ll not hear me argue any different. I regret where things ended up, and daily wish there was some way to fix things. Not looking for anything, not pity nor advice, just saying it because it’s been on my mind.

More to Ponder

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I just wrote and posted my first essay on Critical Games in months. I wouldn’t say it’s my most scholarly work, but I think I make a few good points and anecdotal observations. (It regards Avatar and MUDs in general within the dicussion of virtual worlds and virtual communities.) It did feel good to get something up there, though. It also reminds me that not every post on there has to be Shakespeare or Hemingway. If I get my point across, then I reckon I’m communicating adequately enough, and shouldn’t sweat it so much.

So, I’ve been doing a fair bit more photography of late (and would like to escalate that even further), and have been thinking pretty heavily about investing in some software to help that process. I’m currently using Photoshop CS2, but it’s not native, and so can be a bit of a pain to use in a number of circumstances (largely relating to all the peripheral foo that accompanies the app… plugins, the updater app, camera raw, Adobe Bridge, etc), and still doesn’t solve a core issue of media management. Some of this would be solved by upgrading to CS3, but realistically, 95%+ of what I do with Photoshop is photographs, so it’s worth my time to at least consider a more targeted solution, since they now exist: Apple Aperture, and Adobe Lightroom. They’re fairly direct competitors, with a remarkably similar feature set, and likely either would work satisfactorily for me. Lightroom has tighter Photoshop integration, Aperture has tighter OS integration (both appealing). They cost the same (or will after April 30th, and I’m not sure if the money I’d be using to buy it will be in by then).

I think I may need to sit down and try out each of them (thankfully they both offer free trials), and decide that way, because ultimately reviews and screenshots don’t cut it — experiencing the workflow and deciding what works best for you is what’s necessary. (The point may be moot if a job doesn’t show up soon, but I am remaining optimistic that this will be the case.)

Friday the 13th, 2007

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While considered bad luck by many, I’ve not really found Friday the 13th to be particularly different from any other given Friday… arguably, I’ve had better luck on them than worse (which I suppose goes with my general experience with “luck”… find a 4 leaf clover, fall and skin your knee… walk under a ladder, find a quarter on the sidewalk. Don’t even get me started on my jade pendant). I slept in today, though not as late as some of the past few days, and overall I’m feeling alright.

In my daily spate of rss feeds and blogs, the inestimable Warren Ellis pointed out a fantastic post on M John Harrison’s blog, that’s worth quoting:

Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalises the urge to invent. Worldbuilding gives an unneccessary permission for acts of writing (indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to fulfil their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do everything around here if anything is going to get done.

Above all, worldbuilding is not technically neccessary. It is the great clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable: they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, & makes us very afraid.

I’m not sure that I entirely agree: while worldbuilding should be by no means the primary function of the story, taking the time to hammer out a core basis for the setting of your story I think can be really rewarding. I must admit that I’m a bit biased in this, in that I like thinking about the esoteric and random elements surrounding a story — how a given civilization functions, the history and struggle that caused that particular world to be formed. It’s easy to become myopic when doing this, absolutely, to start thinking about how a particular tribe in Uganda handles the dry season when your story has nothing to do with that and that knowledge will never even be mentioned. But if you are mindful of this, mindful of the lure of avoiding the story by fleshing out the world (yet another form of procrastination, seductive in its psuedo-productivity), then that elaboration can help tighten and expand your story.

That’s my opinion anyway, and I don’t exactly have any award winning publications to back it up. Unlike M John Harrison.

I kind of agree with him in some ways, though. As soon as the worldbuilding becomes even translucent (let alone opaque), you’ve bored most readers… worldbuilding should be for your own edification and cohesion as the writer. Its role in the story itself should be transparent. (I believe it was Silverberg, and I’m paraphrasing, who commented that Heinlein was one of the few others who managed to ladel on pages of exposition without boring the reader.) I do definitely agree with Mr. Harrison’s thoughts about writing, which he expounds upon here:

The notebook stage is the last time anything of mine sees paper until publication. I like to do lots of operations. Fountain pens and refurbished 1930 Underwood portables don’t cut it; digital management is the appropriate choice. Have you ever noticed how every male novelist you meet at a literary festival wears a linen jacket and is called Tim ? Tim prefers an antique Watermans, maybe his dad owned it. It keeps him pure and returns him to the sinewy prose of the giants who came before us all.

I don’t have any writing pattern. I hate being professional. I don’t write according to a schedule or an output plan; I don’t begin at the beginning and write to the end. Or rather: if I do any of those things I usually have to bin the results. Writing should be fun–absorbing, transporting, intense, whatever. It should ambush you. It should be up there with sex, drugs and irresponsible driving. It shouldn’t have anything to do with research or require a degree in finding out about lipstick colours in 1943. I can’t do it if I’m bored or depressed or feeling unconfident. Once it’s working, I can write anywhere–I’ve done stuff while hanging off an abseil rope on a sea cliff or a highrise building–but not under any conditions. If I’m sitting at my desk I hate to be cold, I hate anyone’s noise except my own. But I like working on a train.

Sounds about right to me. When I’m on a roll, it doesn’t really matter where I am, and if I’m feeling depressed, it’s like pulling teeth to get anything that isn’t simply mopey or angst-ridden out onto the screen or page. I’ve found it easy to get into that rut, and try to be mindful of it, and not letting it overwhelm other things I wish to talk about (if you’ve noticed that my posts sometimes seem varied and veer through topics with remarkable speed, now there’s perhaps a hint as to why… that, or I have the attention span of a goldfish. Maybe a bit of both). With depression, it’s remarkably easy to get stuck on depression and its related trappings, despite the fact that the answer to combatting it is do and be productive and talk about other things.

So, R Stevens linked to SBaGen via Twitter, and I decided to at least find out what the heck he was talking about. Turns out SBaGen is an open source binaural beats generator. If you’re not familiar with the concept, a quick explanation (there are whole books about this, so I definitely recommend looking into it on your own if you’re curious): binaural beats is a method to synchronize and alter your brainwave patterns, ie putting yourself into an alpha or theta (among others) state, for the purposes of meditation, focus, more restful sleep, lucid dreaming, and even (supposedly) out of body experiences. It’s kind of new age-y, but since it’s a free generator, who really cares, it cost you nothing to try it out, and if you decide it’s not worth it, you can delete it easily.

I tried out the Demo, which starts at a 200Hz cycle and slides down to 5Hz over the course of 30 minutes. It’s supposed to theoretically leave you feeling light and energized. I do feel more alert after trying it, though I would like to comment on a few things that happened with it (while I won’t necessarily be posting it on here, I do plan on keeping a journal of my observations as I experiment with this). Notably, a few minutes in, my left thumb abruptly started to feel extremely hot, and my right thumb started to feel cold. Neither was touching anything, and after another few minutes, it largely subsided (which would make sense since different wavelengths are meant to affect you differently, and that frequency changed over that period). Dunno what it all means, but it does leave me curious to find out.

Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

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Springtime from a Zoka Window

I’ll admit it: I’m a sucker for blossoming trees. Maybe it’s because I’m a spring baby or something, but I totally dig the period of spring where the trees blossom and bud and just start to sneak out their small leaves. It’s been winter for months, and this revival is energizing, especially on those first few warm, sunny days that witness an explosion of life and growth. Flowers are blooming, and people just seem to be feeling upbeat about life (or perhaps it’s just me).

I’m torn on what to do with this beautiful day (we should have another 5 hours until sunset). I’m currently at Zoka (as the admittedly poor picture suggests), and while it’s nice to be here and perhaps get some writing done, I in some ways would feel remiss if I didn’t go out gallavanting somewhere with my camera in tow, and make use of the day. There is, perhaps, time to do both.

In a moment of eating crow, I would like to publically apologize to Mr. Samuel R. Delany, whose last name I’ve perpetually misspelled for the past decade as “Delaney.” In my defense, apparently it’s one of the most misspelled author names in SFdom, including by publishers, and I could have sworn the original edition of Dhalgren that I read had it spelled with an ‘e’, hence my confusion. Regardless, I’ve realized my error, and corrected its use in the prior entries of this blog (the only use of “Delaney” that will show up on a search now is this very entry). What sparked all this, of course, is noticing that his book on writing has been nominated for a Hugo. Congrats, Mr. Delany!

As a side note about the Delany-Delaney thing: When I got my copy of Dhalgren signed last year, he added an ‘e’ to the end of my name. Given that I now realize I’ve been doing the same to him for years, I find it highly amusing. (Little things!)

The Blue Heron Struts
The Fox and the Hawk Look On
Life Marches Onward!

Of Libraries, Bars, and Corners

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I just finished listening to How it Ends by Devotchka, and How Strange, Innocence by Explosions in the Sky just started, and I’m not really sure where I’m going in this post beyond a few things I wanted to mention, so we’ll see what comes, shall we?

I’ve been playing with Delicious Library the past day or two, and I must say: it’s good. It’s a very targeted application, aimed at filling a specific (but arguably necessary) role, namely creating a rich media management system. I’m about a third to halfway through adding my things to the library, which really isn’t bad considering the quantity of stuff and the amount of time I’ve devoted to the project. I feel good enough about the product to have written up a review, and hopefully that show go live in the next week or so (I sent it to Wil along with some interview questions this evening, so when it goes live somewhat depends on when he gets back to me). I’m pretty pleased with the responses I got from my last article (on Scrivener), so I’m hoping this spotlight also goes well. For those who might be interested in its potential for institutional use in some capacity: it currently doesn’t really support ISSN or LOC information (though it does support full ISBN and ISBN-13 lookups), so I’m not sure if it’s really ready for a large scale academic or institutional library. As far as communal (informal) libraries go, however, or small scale operations (say, a coffee house that offers books to read to patrons), I think it would be phenomenal.

Actually, let’s take a second and expand on that idea… I’d really love to see that. A coffee house that also serves a community role by housing a “reading room” lined with books that can be checked out by customers willing to register details with the cafe. Books could be purchased by the cafe to start, and then take donations of money or books to expand and refresh the library. I don’t know if it would fly — I suspect it might (as I’ve mentioned before, the notion of coffee and books seems to have already been imprinted on the public as a good combination). I’m in no position to start such a thing, but now I’m sitting here wondering if I know anyone who might be.

So, as most of you are aware, I don’t really know that many people out here (though that is changing). Aside from whatever other ramifications that may have, it means that I’ve been dining alone a lot. I’m by no means the first person to make this observation (I seem to recall a well known dining critic who wrote a regular column based on dining alone), but in general, restaurants have no idea what to do with the solitary diner. While there doesn’t seem to be as much open disdain for it as has been alluded to in the past, there does generally seem to be an outcast mentality that accompanies “table for one, please.” My observation is that you tend to automatically be placed either in the corner, out of the way, or (if they have one) at the bar. I don’t drink, but I’ve certainly found myself perched on a bar chair (no stools thankfully) more than a few times in the past month or so of being out here, and I don’t imagine that trend is going to subside any time soon.

Personally, I don’t really mind too much: when you’re stuck in a corner alone, it gives you a chance to cultivate other habits that are arguably beneficial. Bringing a book to a restaurant suddenly seems more reasonable, and more often than not, I pull out my pocket notebook and write a journal entry while I wait for my food to arrive. What, you didn’t think this was the only place I write, did you? I may not write as much as I should (and certainly not as much productive writing as I should), but I wouldn’t exactly call myself a complete slouch about it, either.

The past few days have been really good, thinking about it. I’ve been feeling pretty upbeat, and managed to a) actually talk to one of the cute baristas at the coffeehouse; b) catch up with folks from Coccinella and even go to dinner with them and meet some of their friends (which was a blast, if any of you are reading this, I really appreciated getting to come, and hope I didn’t make too much of an ass of myself); c) introduced myself, exchanged cards with, and chatted for more than 30 seconds with Wil, which is actually quite a feat — it’s dumb, I know, but I always feel a little uncomfortable about introducing myself to people who are famous, even if it’s just fame within a select circle (like, say, the Mac developer community). I end up worrying about offending them or looking like a hanger-on, and feel like I need to say something worthwhile and important so I’m not wasting their time. It’s just in general been a pretty good few days. At least for the moment, my bills are paid, and I know I have the money for the rent due in a week, and… well, yeah. Things are okay.

It’s interesting, but a lot of that “hey hey, things are okay” feeling really started accumulating once I started making real progress on unpacking all my books. I guess I’m still a bit of a bookworm at heart: I feel better when I have shelves of books around. Reuniting my things from before the divorce with the things from after the divorce is also a pretty significant act. While I’m not trying to sound like a materialist, it really does make me feel a lot more “whole”. When I packed everything up in 2005, I felt like I’d packed up a portion of myself in the process, and it wasn’t any specific thing that I could point out and say “Yes, that, that’s what makes me feel more complete.” It was more the whole notion of fragmenting myself, losing my anchor point. The entire time I was in Vermont, I didn’t really feel connected (which I will freely admit is largely my own fault), and never really settled down or got comfortable with who I was. And now… well, I’m still not sure if I’ve figured out the whole “who I am” thing to any modicum of comfort, but I definitely feel like I’m back on a path of getting there.

Innocuous Posting

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You may have noticed a few little update-y things I’ve done on the blog, mostly behind the scenes, so perhaps not: I’ve re-added the MyBlogLog widget to the sidebar, re-activated my Google Sitemaps plugin, and added a Print plugin — I figure I write longwinded rambling posts, the least I could do is offer a way for folks to read them in another manner that might appeal to them more. And if I ever get off my ass and start posting articles and reviews, it’ll be doubly handy!

This is going to be something of a linkdump, just so you’re aware. There’s a number of things I want to mention that have come up in the recent past that I think are worth your attention. First up, for those of us who use Twitter, I really must point out the sexy and fabulous Twitterrific for all your OS X Tweeting needs. I know I’m late to the bus on this one, but it’s still worth pointing out. The interface is sleek and refined, and can be incredibly subdued and non-invasive if you want it to be. For one, it has no dock icon to clutter up your dock, though it does add a small “t” icon to your menubar for calling it up when you want (or you can set a hotkey to do that, which is what I did). I have the window set to appear when a new twitter occurs, and then after 30 seconds quietly disappears again. No noise, no clutter, and I don’t have to pay attention to it if I don’t want to. I like that philosophy for an application. I wonder if I could convince them to put together a similar system for RSS reading?

Which takes me to the next topic: RSS readers. I played with standalone RSS readers when RSS first became a “thing”, but was unimpressed with the offerings. It’s not to say they were bad — NetNewsWire for instance is an excellent and robust application, but the information metaphor they all seemed to run with just didn’t click for me. I still saw the invaluable nature of feeds, though, so I was quite happy when Apple put together RSS support built into Safari, and have been using their integrated solution ever since. It’s still not ideal, but it does dump the information in front of me handily, and I don’t have to think about opening another app or going somewhere specific: I just have a Feeds menu on my bookmarks bar, and it tells me when there’s a new feed, and I go click on it. Done. But, well, feeds have continued to evolve. Feed based technology drives all the various -casts going on out there (music casts, podcasts, photocasts, etc), using RSS Enclosures, mostly, which aren’t really all that supported in Safari. So, I decided to see what’s going on out there in Readerland, and took a stroll through a few. Results? I’m STILL not happy with any of the RSS readers out there. NewsFire seems pretty nice, though, and I like their a la cart licensing system ($18 for the basic license… for an extra $9, you can add a household license, and/or also for $9, you can add a “license for life”, which guarantees all future versions will be a free upgrade, no matter what). Overall, it has a clean interface, which seems to be a blending of Spotlight and Aqua Unified aesthetics, and its keyboard control is mostly intuitive and what I’d expect (not always, though). I’m still debating whether I’d actually use it if I spent the money on the license — I’m usually all for supporting independent developers, but a) I’m not entirely happy with it, and b) I need to watch my budget until I have a steady income. If either of those issues were alone, I’d spend the money (I bought Scrivener, after all, and I’m in the same budget minding now as I was then).

While I was exploring NewsFire’s developer site, and came across another of his applications that is just crazy cool, though. Safari, like most browsers, has a search bar in the navigation control. What Inquisitor does is cause that search bar to work like a Spotlight search: dynamic, real time results as you type, in a drop down window that you can click from. The interface is clean, and again, it just works, adding functionality to the browser in a very real way.

This is something I’m probably going to clean up and expand upon for a post over on Applegeeks, but one of the things about modern software development is that there really is room for small, specialized applications that are innocuous and efficient. The goal, as I see it, is to make an application do its job so well that it becomes invisible to the user. Every time a user of your application stops and says “Shit, that was easy,” then you did your job. Also, as is shown by applications like Twitterrific, there is room for applications that run separately that can still offer the same seamless functionality as if it was integrated into another application, without trying to shoehorn it INTO another app. I truly hope we see more and more of this sort of approach (I think any sort of push based information could feasibly work with it… RSS feeds and email immediately come to mind. Some IM already does, but I think there’s definitely room for improvement).

Tuesday Drips By

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As a follow up to last post, I did indeed procure and install a shower head and pillow (well, the pillow doesn’t really need installing per se, but the gist I think is made). Life is better, though I’m still looking forward to something more resembling a bed. I’ve gotten a few other errands out of the way, and my Scrivener review is now up, if you care to read it.

Today I woke up to a bright, blue sky, which is always fantastic. Spent the morning reading and puttering around the apartment waiting to meet with my landlady and for a package from my parents to arrive (got it, and it’s all very much appreciated! Happy Ayyam-i-ha!). The meeting with the landlady went well, so now I’m officially the leaseholder and I’ve paid my rent and all that. I’ve got to say, it’s really nice renting from someone who is willing to work with their tenants: I was able to move in on a relatively small deposit and without the lease officially signed, and all a week before the apartment was originally supposed to come due. Big, hearty thumbs up on that. We also briefly discussed my doing some computer related work for her other business, and she asked me to give her a rate to set up a VPN. I’ll need to think on that and get back to her: not too worried about setting up the VPN (she has pretty minimal needs, we’re not talking some enterprise level solution here), just trying to think of what to charge — I could certainly use the money.

When I was down in Portland, I swung by Powell’s, and ended up picking up Harry G. Frankfurt’s On Bullshit and On Truth, both of which are delightful short reads (I started and finished On Truth this morning waiting for my appointment). Definitely some interesting things to think on, and I’ve already started taking some notes (via Scrivener!) for an essay I’ve been thinking about writing.

I’m currently in Zoka, downing a pot of Jasmine while waiting for for their wireless connection issues to sort themselves out (system crashed and had to be rebooted, and now appears to be flaking out again… unfortunate). I’ve been here most of the afternoon, wrapping up a project for AvatarMUD and mailing it out to the rest of the staff. While I think I did some good work with it and that it would on the whole benefit the game, I’m not exactly holding my breath on seeing it actually implemented. Perhaps I’m getting cynical in my near-decade on the MUD, but seems like big changes tend not to go through unless they’re championed by someone in a position to implement the change themselves… which this isn’t. Sorry I can’t be more specific about what I’m talking about. It’s good to have it out of the way, at least. I’ve been working on it since August.

The weather has progressively become wetter as the day has marched on, with it currently wavering between drizzling rain and simply looking sullenly damp. I’m fine with this. I kind of like the semi-rain Seattle tends to get. It evokes a partcular mood that is a little hard to describe: the closest I can come to a short definition would be “indie aloofness”, only without the smug pretentiousness. You’re walking around or driving around and there’s a good groove going on the radio or on your iPod and you’re feeling good about the solitude. It is all good.