Presently Links

I’ve added a new feature to the left sidebar. Now you can see what books, video games, and movies I’m into at the moment! As per my new method for linking to books, movies, etc., the name of the work will link to its official page if I found one, and the Amazon/Internet Movie Database links will link to the appropriate page on those sites. I’ve also jazzed up the whole affair with some color (!) by including thumbnails of the cover/poster for the works in question. If the item is on sale at Amazon, clicking the image will send you to its product page.

Quarter Blues

Most of my friends are going through quarter-life crises of varying severity. On the whole, each feels that he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, or that he knows but isn’t getting there any time fast. Most either don’t have jobs they like, or if they don’t mind what they do they still aren’t in a field they want to be in for much longer. I’ll go ahead and throw myself into that batch, too, only I don’t feel the crushing pressure of my own wasted potential as badly because I was unemployed for so long. Not having a job for an entire year makes you pretty happy to be doing anything for a paycheck. But that’s already wearing off a little bit, and I, too, am wondering where I want to go from here.

I thnk that the reason that most of my friends are having their “quarters” is that we’re all too creative. We want to write or to dream or to make movies or music, but reality caught up with us way to fast so we’re stuck for the moment. No one has the means to do nothing but write all day, or we’re unwilling to give our lifestyles up to do it. Sure, we have free time from six to bedtime, but instead we hang out or watch tv or otherwise waste our time. Sure, we don’t regret the social time, but at the end of the week we haven’t written many pages.

And I think the problem is motivation. And fear. We don’t have teachers or parents watching over us, evaluating us, and forcing us to produce. We just have our friends, and if we lock ourselves in our rooms all week to create, they get lonely. I’m not calling for my friends to urge each other to pursue the arts. I’m calling for each of us to stop being afraid of our potential. There’s nothing wrong with writing a few crappy short stories if it gets you in the mood to write a really good one. But we all just keep whining to disatisfied selves that we’re unhappy with our jobs because they won’t take us where we think we want to go with our existence. We don’t actually want to quit our jobs to go be artists or entrepreneurs, we just want to want to to quit our jobs. In the meantime we should just get something done.

I almost think that an old-school literary society is what some of us need. The artists need somewhere to sit around and discuss books and films and maybe on odd occasions share their own works. It needs to be a dedicated place and time, not just a tangent sprung from a hang-out. And it needs to force the disatisfied out of their ruts. I don’t mean life-changing madness, I just mean a nudge in the right direction until we all really figure it out.

Just a thought.

5 Days of TypePad

The geniuses at Six Apart who invented MovableType are starting to show off more of the features of their upcoming TypePad service, and it’s looking really cool so far. The problem with having an MT weblog is that you have to run and configure it all off of your own server. LiveJournal is currently the big centralized service, but TypePad seems like it’s going to have a lot to offer. Namely, that ability to do something that doesn’t involve merely writing text posts. They’ve built in easy tools for customizing the look of your site, building pictures albums, and posting photos from your mobile phone. Sadly, as dumb a contraction as “blogging” is, they’ve gone one step farther and officially adopted “moblogging” as a term. When I hear the word I just think that it’s a new term for gay bashing.

Comma Use

A few things about printed English have been bothering me lately:

A big pet peeve of mine is when people leave out the last comma in a list. For example: last night I ate dinner, watched tv and played video games. The names of most law firms are like this. I temp’ed at this one: Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, L.L.P. The problem is that the commas denote seperation. Leaving one out implies grouping. Say, for instance, I was known to be into orgies and wanted to list my exploits for the weekend: Tina, Cindy, Mary and Debbie. Are “Mary and Debbie” one exploit or two seperate encounters? There isn’t a good way to write a list if one of the list items has a comma in it. Example: when I get a lot of money, I’d like to buy a fast car, Sony, Inc., and a pony. Sony, Inc. is obviously one item in the list, but since the comma plays two roles it just don’t look very tidy. I don’t know who to complain to about this to have it fixed. Is there a government entity in charge of punctuation that could set rules and impose fines?

Update: Ah, it seems that Jon is right, and I should have been on top of that. From my very quick research, it looks like AP Style suggests omitting the last comma while Chicago Style leaves it in, but it’s always up to the style-guide of a publication to decide which to use. Still, I think omitting the final comma is confusing, because lists can contain compound items (as per my orgy example). To say, “this weekend, my sexual encounters were with: Tina, Cindy, Mary and Debbie” and “this weekend, my sexual encounters were with: “Tina, Mary and Debbie, and Cindy” both mean the same thing in my eyes. That is, that this weekend I had a one-on-one sexual experiences with both Tina and Cindy and had a threesome with Mary and Debbie. If you omit the last comma, that distinction is lost. Each comma should denote a new item in the list. If commas aren’t present, grouping should be assumed. So, “Tina, Cindy, Mary, and Debbie” means four seperate sessions, while “Tina, Cindy, Mary and Debbie” means three sessions, one of which was a threesome.

Don't Buy It

So BuyMusic has launched, and the Mac community is not very happy about it. Word has it that the service isn’t nearly as slick as the iTunes Music Store, it isn’t as reliable, though the price is lower it isn’t consistently lower, it doesn’t give you the same rights for every song so you can only burn/copy some of the songs and can’t transfer some songs to mp3 players, and doesn’t work with iPods at all. But it may also have as good or possibly a better selection than the iTMS.

What’s the big deal, then? Why are Mac users do defensive about other companies copying “their” products? Aside from what I understand to be blatant rip-offs of Apple’s ads, the marketplace is built on companies edging each other out by making their version of a similar product better. Of course, platforms working as they do, the market sectors for the two products are actually entirely mutually exclusive, so there really isn’t any competition. Except that Apple claims that they’ll have a Windows version of the iTMS out by the end of the year. Doesn’t it seem likely that BuyMusic will goad Apple into re-prioritizing the Windows version to push it out the door faster? (I know, supposedly there’s a hangup with the record companies’ contracts.)

Mac users all know that Apple-made products are better. From what I understand, BuyMusic’s service went down the day of their launch because their servers couldn’t handle the load, whereas Apple’s sold a couple million songs in the first week without a hitch. The iTMS user interface is near perfect. Free 30 second previews of every song in the store. Consistent, clearly spelled-out, lenient digital rights restrictions. And, most importantly, a dedicated effort to bring in independent music and offer them the exact same deal as the major labels get.

The Apple service will be better, and Mac users will know it. Other people won’t, and they’ll think they’re happy with the inferior product. If Apple’s smart, they’ll get their Windows version out the door fast and make some money. If not, they’ll pretend that they’re taking the high road by scoffing at the competition and reminding each other that they know better.

Update: Despite not being too worried about BuyMusic, I do think it’s outrageous that their web site only works on Internet Expolorer for Windows. Why bother doing extra work to make it IE-only when you could make it work for everyone? Using Netscape? Nope. Want to see it on a Palm Pilot for a cell phone? Nah. Are you blind and use a screen reader for the internet? It might work, might not. Have a Mac and for some reason want to use BuyMusic instead of iTMS? Sorry. Why would you intentially overlook potential customers? Aren’t UNIX users often big music geeks? Wouldn’t making your service accessible to them - something that would take no more work than making it IE only, earn you money?

Update: Here’s a very negative review of BuyMusic that has nothing to do with the iTMS. Just how bad BuyMusic is.

Sympathy for the Star Wars Kid

If there hadn’t been other people around, I would have cried. I just read Wired News’ coverage of the “Star Wars Kid.” I’m loathe to admit that my maturity level has reached a point where I can’t find some things funny. Sure, watching what I’ve seen of the movie, I admit that it’s hilarious. But then I read about the kid. He had to drop out of school because everyone made fun of him. The entire world has seen this video. (Capsule: fat kid isn’t very popular. For some reason, films video of himself practicing lightsaber moves. Four kids find video, put it on internet. Kid is humiliated: finishes school year in psychiatric school.)

We’ve all done things that we’d be embarrassed to have other people see. And in a way I support calling people on stuff because having thick skin is important in life. But teenagers are insecure and they think they’ve got a lot more figured out than they ever really do. Most importantly, they don’t quite know what to write off and who to disregard. And you know a lot of them do as a result? They kill themselves. I was a nerd in high school and I felt the pain of not being cool. When people made fun of me behind my back, I figured it out. And it hurt. My God! How hard must it be to be a gay and in high school?

The Internet is Shit claims that the web has died and that dorks need to shut down their weblogs and get lives. “Norms” don’t understand how hard it is to be different. Tom Coates puts it very well:

Gay teenagers are two to three times to attempt suicide and two to three times more likely to succeed - and why? Because they think they’re completely alone in the world and they have no way of connecting with other gay teenagers. Over the last few years that’s all changed - I’ve seen it happening. Gay teenagers are exploring over the internet first - they’re finding other people like themselves, getting advice and support and connecting to a wider community. Hopefully the result will be less death, less depression and less wasted years.

And here are some other reasons why the internet is not shit and why virtual community is not dead: alcoholism, disabilities, addiction, mental health, prostate cancer, teen health…

What Andy Beio has done for the Star Wars Kid proves the point. As a nerd, I’m the first to admit that dorks should get out and see the world more often. But at heart, a nerd is a nerd, and needs others like him to discuss comic books and video games. Donations from empathetic souls haven’t changed the fact that the Star Wars Kid was humiliated on a global scale, but they have shown him that the cool kids at his school aren’t the only people out there.

Getting picked on sucks, but it’s sadly just the way it is. All I want is to hear people say, “that’s not okay” from time to time. The usual reaction when people hear an uncomfortable conversation is to stay quiet. Don’t. I have no idea where the notion came from that being non-confrontational was a good thing. Confront. Speak softly and explain calmly. Stick up for people.

High school ended for me and when I started college I rebuilt my life the way I wanted it to be. I found a place where I felt accepted. I think I’ve made a good life for myself and I’m generally happy with it. But, like the worn part of the inside of my lower lip brought by years and years of saxophone practice, the scar of being unpopular will never heal. I’ll always be a nerd, and I’ll never be normal. And I’m happy for that. I’m stronger, and I’m proud of who I am. But not everyone has a neurochemistry that keeps them happy most of the time. Not everyone has supportive parents like I do. And not everyone survived high school.

I wish I had the words to inspire geeks like me to suck it up. Life keeps on going. What’s the most important thing about graduating high school? Everything wipes clean. The day you start college you realize that no one around you knows who you are. When they meet you, they get to know the person you are. They haven’t grown up with you and they don’t know about your awkward adolescence. The problem with high school for me was that once you get cast into a role that’s how people know you. In college, the person they met now was the real me. Wargamer? Yup. Comic book reader? Yup. Someone worth knowing? Nerd? Damn right.

Worst Opening Ever

This post by Kottke is fantastic. I reprint it in full here:

It was a dark and stormy night (with cheese)

Mariann Simms has won the 2003 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, “a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels”. Her submission:

They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two- flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white…Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn’t taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently.

The contest is named for Edward George Earl Bulwer- Lytton, a Victorian novelist whose opening to Paul Clifford is widely regarded to be just a bit over-the-top bad:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

When not winning contests, Mariann runs HumorMeOnline.com.

Would that I could write so poorly.

Downloading Album Art Made Easy

I ran across a neat little iTunes script today while reading Plastic Bag. You just select a song or group of songs in iTunes, go to the script menu, selected “Fetch Art,” and it’ll connect to Amazon.com and download the album cover for every item in the database. Then you can select the songs and copy them into iTunes, so that when you play music you’ll be able to see the cover art for the album. The script works perfectly and I now have artwork for almost all of my music. Fetch Art for iTunes is a free download.

One Step Backward, Into the Future

After much deliberation, I’ve decided to switch to AT&T Wireless from Sprint PCS. We’ll see if frequent dropped calls and poor service are just a Sprint thing.

The fun part is that I now have a shiny new Sony Ericsson t68i to play with. I’ve already very pleasingly used iSync over Bluetooth, putting all of my phone numbers on the new phone in under a minute and set “Take On Me” as my ringtone.

Even better, the phone works on AT&T’s GSM network, which is some sort of next-generation digital technology that isn’t at all backwards-compatible with other towers. So with the features and potentially near DSL-speed data transfer rates comes the problem that my new phone won’t work outside of major cities (and the entire state of Florida for some reason). The upside is that they’re only building GSM towers now, and at the rate of one or two a week, so within a year it’ll be an amazing network. It seems odd to be moving to a superior technology that doesn’t work as well, but I like to live on the cutting edge. And hey, without the “eXtreme” I’d just be “dav.”

The Onion

It’s been a while since I’ve read an entire issue of The Onion. Usually I read a few and then scan the rest. Because, really, once you’ve gotten acquainted with it you can pretty much guess what an article says by its headline. But today I’m bored. Very bored.

ascii m4tr1x

Anyone who has played DR can tell you that text is where it’s at. Who needs A/V anyway, huh? Just ask the teenage girls on the metro busy texting their American Idol votes a few months ago. Text is the way.

So who remembers Star Wars Asciimation? You know, that time some lunatic rendered thirty minutes or so of A New Hope into a text-based movie. But of course we know that that trilogy is soooo over these days (at least until Episode III comes out). These days the only trilogy anyone cares about is The Matrix (at least until Return of the King comes out). So now some new maniac has gone ahead and rendered a few seconds of Neo fighting an agent into ascii. Pretty damn cool.

Update: the German guy who made the ascii-movie has a bunch more on his site as well.