Contrary to way things should work, the world at large continues on its merry way and largely cares not a whit about my fledgling career. Ah well. :-)
More to the point, life gleefully interposes itself between one and one's targeted routine, and as such (due to necessary post-vacation grocery shopping and various catch-up efforts) I got neither much reading nor much writing done last night. But life is long... I can take up yesterday's slack tonight, and get some concrete work done. Nothing is on my calendar to foul things up, and unless the world sits up and takes notice of me for a change, the mechanism is clear.
The good news is, I'm still stoked. Plenty of creative juices flowing.
A shout out to Sam Greenspan, BTW. You're an inspiration, and your willingness to dash yourself against the rocks of "breaking into the business" has been a big help to me in getting off my two-cheeked inertia and slogging forward. You da man.
Less talk, more action. Will update later.
-Rich
Tuesday, August 14, 2001
Monday, August 13, 2001
Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig
It's good to be back.
Maine was a refreshing break in the routine, and a good hard push for my reboot switch. I got a lot of reading done, interacted with actual humans, and aside from missing Sushi and the dogs everything was great.
I discovered several things while in Maine:
<cabbagepatch> Schweet </cabbagepatch>
Since I'm looking to start in the SF field ("science fiction" or "speculative fiction," depending whom one asks, but never "Sci-Fi"), I'm also looking to assemble a few short stories to get into magazines like Asimov's SF and/or Analog SF&F. Short-story publication is a proven means of greasing the rails when shopping around a novel in the SF genre, so that's the tack I'm going to take.
Tripp will be familiar with this plan; I tried to commit myself to it several years ago (1997-ish), and wound up crashing & burning with one mediocre story because I solicited some peoples' opinions whom I had no business asking. Friends (as I'm sure Wendy's aware) sometimes make the very worst critics, because (a) they love you, and thus can either gush praise when ruthlessness is needed or overcriticize to prevent you falling on your face, and (b) their opinions count way too much.
More to the point, I wasn't ready. I was felled by a few slings 'n' arrows; my skin lacked thickening.
So anyway, it's a few years later now, in many ways I've been to Hell and back, and some editor half a continent away isn't as likely to knock me flat with a rejection letter anymore. I've also learned Sturgeon's Law, which reads (charitably), "Ninety percent of everything is crap." In other words, be prepared to write a lot of crap, accept it as crap, and keep an eye out for the non-crap ten percent.
...And when all is said and done, especially after a hot & humid week in an otherwise beautiful vacation cabin, central air rocks.
-Rich
Maine was a refreshing break in the routine, and a good hard push for my reboot switch. I got a lot of reading done, interacted with actual humans, and aside from missing Sushi and the dogs everything was great.
I discovered several things while in Maine:
- The sound of screaming kids doesn't bother me nearly as severely as I assumed it would
- I've really really really been doing myself a disservice by not reading a novel a week
- Doing a half hour of stretching exercises every morning makes a world of difference
- There can be entire weeks in Maine wherein the daytime temperature never dips below 85 degrees
- It's possible to be conversant with the details of Rugrats and Blue's Clues without a kid to show for it
Wing and a Prayer
This is a little scary to say (the revelation is still fresh, new and fragile), but I think this trip finally managed to kick the chocks away from my writing wheels. I've got the (very) basics of a world and a few characters roughed out, and I'm gonna try to hammer together a plot outline for a novel over the coming week.<cabbagepatch> Schweet </cabbagepatch>
Since I'm looking to start in the SF field ("science fiction" or "speculative fiction," depending whom one asks, but never "Sci-Fi"), I'm also looking to assemble a few short stories to get into magazines like Asimov's SF and/or Analog SF&F. Short-story publication is a proven means of greasing the rails when shopping around a novel in the SF genre, so that's the tack I'm going to take.
Tripp will be familiar with this plan; I tried to commit myself to it several years ago (1997-ish), and wound up crashing & burning with one mediocre story because I solicited some peoples' opinions whom I had no business asking. Friends (as I'm sure Wendy's aware) sometimes make the very worst critics, because (a) they love you, and thus can either gush praise when ruthlessness is needed or overcriticize to prevent you falling on your face, and (b) their opinions count way too much.
More to the point, I wasn't ready. I was felled by a few slings 'n' arrows; my skin lacked thickening.
So anyway, it's a few years later now, in many ways I've been to Hell and back, and some editor half a continent away isn't as likely to knock me flat with a rejection letter anymore. I've also learned Sturgeon's Law, which reads (charitably), "Ninety percent of everything is crap." In other words, be prepared to write a lot of crap, accept it as crap, and keep an eye out for the non-crap ten percent.
...And when all is said and done, especially after a hot & humid week in an otherwise beautiful vacation cabin, central air rocks.
-Rich
Friday, August 03, 2001
And He's Off!
Another slow day for blogging, apparently; at least among the ones I hit daily.
Today's been consumed with fixing month-closing problems (as I predicted), and lunch was errand time. Things are trailing off, though, and I expect the rest of the day will lean more toward the usual slow pace.
Portland, ME is looking like low-to-mid 80s all week and sunny. Should be about five degrees cooler than Richmond, but without work.
Will try to post from Maine, on the off chance anyone's reading...
-Rich
Today's been consumed with fixing month-closing problems (as I predicted), and lunch was errand time. Things are trailing off, though, and I expect the rest of the day will lean more toward the usual slow pace.
Portland, ME is looking like low-to-mid 80s all week and sunny. Should be about five degrees cooler than Richmond, but without work.
Will try to post from Maine, on the off chance anyone's reading...
-Rich
Thursday, August 02, 2001
More on AbioCor
Wow. More great news. This guy's going to be a poster child for the new artificial heart.
It's wonderful to hear all the ways that getting circulation back to normal in this guy's body have helped him out. Breathing, mobility, optimism... I have to admit, this is one of those breakthroughs that is inspiring to me. The guy's not exactly doing cartwheels around the IC ward, but the fact that he's gaining strength so dramatically 30 days after being diagnosed with less that thirty days to live is a real achievement.
Look for Abiomed (Nasdaq:ABMD), AbioCor's parent company, to go absolutely nuts in the coming years.
-Rich
It's wonderful to hear all the ways that getting circulation back to normal in this guy's body have helped him out. Breathing, mobility, optimism... I have to admit, this is one of those breakthroughs that is inspiring to me. The guy's not exactly doing cartwheels around the IC ward, but the fact that he's gaining strength so dramatically 30 days after being diagnosed with less that thirty days to live is a real achievement.
Look for Abiomed (Nasdaq:ABMD), AbioCor's parent company, to go absolutely nuts in the coming years.
-Rich
If You're not Part of the Solution, You're Part of the Precipitate
I know I've mentioned it at least once before, but I like rain too (though I've only seldom been privy to the sort of torrents they're apparently getting in Chicago). I know exactly what Sarah's talking about when she mentions grinning like an idiot through the downpour. Rain is a happy thing, the earth's atmosphere closing the loop on all of our sweat, shower steam and pasta pots.
On the other hand, we have Mary, who sees ill portent in the deluge. Bummer. Here's hoping the gods are all just washing off.
Richmond could use some serious rain. We had a day of pretty constant showering this past Saturday, but on the whole it's been really dry this summer, and we've got the brown lawns and occasional water restrictions to prove it. Not as bad as some parts of the country, I'm sure, but still, some real rain would be welcome.
It got up to 89 in Maine yesterday. Why was I going again? ;-)
Cool Tool Find: Grabbed directions from Richmond to Dulles Airport to refresh my memory from MapBlast! today. Their new "LineDrive" map format is a wonder of concise completeness, and it even fit everything on one page.
-Rich
On the other hand, we have Mary, who sees ill portent in the deluge. Bummer. Here's hoping the gods are all just washing off.
Richmond could use some serious rain. We had a day of pretty constant showering this past Saturday, but on the whole it's been really dry this summer, and we've got the brown lawns and occasional water restrictions to prove it. Not as bad as some parts of the country, I'm sure, but still, some real rain would be welcome.
It got up to 89 in Maine yesterday. Why was I going again? ;-)
Cool Tool Find: Grabbed directions from Richmond to Dulles Airport to refresh my memory from MapBlast! today. Their new "LineDrive" map format is a wonder of concise completeness, and it even fit everything on one page.
-Rich
Wow. 9 AM on Thursday and Sam Greenspan's the only one of us to have updated his blog since yesterday afternoon. Must either be a very busy day or a very boring one. Or you all have lives, or something. ;-)
Today I am moving fully to the new machine our admin's provided for me. Of course my putting this in writing means that I'll actually be given lots to do and figure out today, thus precluding getting the move done. Oy.
Prepping for the Maine adventure at home - there's entirely too much to do before flying out Saturday morning, and of course I agreed to go see Planet of the Apes tonight with a friend. I need a time-altering pendant like Hermione's from the third Harry Potter book.
-Rich
Today I am moving fully to the new machine our admin's provided for me. Of course my putting this in writing means that I'll actually be given lots to do and figure out today, thus precluding getting the move done. Oy.
Prepping for the Maine adventure at home - there's entirely too much to do before flying out Saturday morning, and of course I agreed to go see Planet of the Apes tonight with a friend. I need a time-altering pendant like Hermione's from the third Harry Potter book.
-Rich
Wednesday, August 01, 2001
Once Again, the Little Things
So nice to discover that absent my attention things continue to go well in the world.
Case in point: with the release (a year or so ago) of the "Rapier" version of Microsoft's Windows CE, M$ added a feature called ClearType™ to their document reader. This allows for better horizontal resolution when displaying text on color LCD screens by using the red, green and blue sub-pixels that represent every "full" pixel on such a display. This is tough to get your head around, so if you're in need of clarification at this point, here's an excellent explanation of the theory and practice. In short, in the horizontal dimension (the most important one for purposes of text rendering), the three-pixels-in-one design of color LCDs amounts to a happy accident that allows the savvy programmer to effectively triple display resolution.
All well and good, and a spiffy hack to boot, but this tech was only available for Microsoft devices (with their 240x320 screen resolution that barely needed it) so far as I was aware, and I'm a Palm guy. Ah well, I thought; someday this will be the standard, and until then I'd better get used to my chunky 160x160 display and like it.
Today I stumbled upon WordSmith, a PalmOS word processor from BlueNomad that purported to bring a similar text-smoothing algorithm ("FineType" in BlueNomad's lingo) to my little Palm IIIc. Downloaded, installed, marveled. This is good stuff. Suffice to say that 160x160 benefits from the process a lot more than 240x320 does. I'll try to make some screen shots myself, but for the nonce, check out the explanation at the above link. I'm actually considering not taking along my iBook, and just relying on the Palm IIIc on my coming vacation.
I'm easy to please. Just teach an existing toy of mine a new trick. :-)
-Rich
Case in point: with the release (a year or so ago) of the "Rapier" version of Microsoft's Windows CE, M$ added a feature called ClearType™ to their document reader. This allows for better horizontal resolution when displaying text on color LCD screens by using the red, green and blue sub-pixels that represent every "full" pixel on such a display. This is tough to get your head around, so if you're in need of clarification at this point, here's an excellent explanation of the theory and practice. In short, in the horizontal dimension (the most important one for purposes of text rendering), the three-pixels-in-one design of color LCDs amounts to a happy accident that allows the savvy programmer to effectively triple display resolution.
All well and good, and a spiffy hack to boot, but this tech was only available for Microsoft devices (with their 240x320 screen resolution that barely needed it) so far as I was aware, and I'm a Palm guy. Ah well, I thought; someday this will be the standard, and until then I'd better get used to my chunky 160x160 display and like it.
Today I stumbled upon WordSmith, a PalmOS word processor from BlueNomad that purported to bring a similar text-smoothing algorithm ("FineType" in BlueNomad's lingo) to my little Palm IIIc. Downloaded, installed, marveled. This is good stuff. Suffice to say that 160x160 benefits from the process a lot more than 240x320 does. I'll try to make some screen shots myself, but for the nonce, check out the explanation at the above link. I'm actually considering not taking along my iBook, and just relying on the Palm IIIc on my coming vacation.
I'm easy to please. Just teach an existing toy of mine a new trick. :-)
-Rich
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