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Saturday, March 29, 2008 What Did You Mis-Hear Today? While driving home, I thought I heard the guy on the radio say: "I used to do math, but then I lost everything."* And my thought was: Are they cracking down on calculators now? Am I breaking the law by fiddling with derivatives? Oooh, that sounds kinda dirty. *(It was actually one of those public service announcements for meth use prevention.) [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:35 PM : Friday, March 28, 2008 Semantics Or Something Else Entirely? I've heard people refer to "college" and "grad school" as completely separate things. But grad school is in a college. Even med and law schools are located on college campuses. Let's just say I'm annoyed that people have co-opted the term "college" to mean "undergraduates". Saying I go to college and I go to grad school is not supposed to be mutually exclusive. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:10 AM : Thursday, March 27, 2008 Memes Booking Through Thursday: Cover-Up While acknowledging that we can’t judge books by their covers, how much does the design of a book affect your reading enjoyment? Hardcover vs. softcover? Trade paperback vs. mass market paperback? Font? Illustrations? Etc.? I despise most modern book covers. But since I do read books with recent publication dates, it means that the cover has no bearing on my enjoyment of a story. I have no preferences for hardcover/softcover/trade/mass market on an enjoyment level although this definitely factors in on the financial aspect. Fonts and illustrations, however, are a different story. These things don't affect how I read a story--once I start it, that is. But it does affect the probability that I will pick it up in the first place. It's probably due to some social conditioning I have yet to scrub out. Let's see, if I encounter these random covers in the bookstore: Bland classical landscapes or portraits - Maybe, if I've heard of the author Garish horror imagery - Unless it's Lovecraft, no Knives/people running/other thriller and suspense designs - Probably not Cutesy mysteries - NO Cinch covers and man-titty - Only when I've read favorable reviews Flowers - No Women in skin tight clothing - NO Space ships - Maybe Guys with swords - Um, probably not Girly fantasy illustrations/cats - Unless I've read a really favorable review, no Cartoons - Quite possibly, especially if it's really terrible Plain solid colors - Too easy to overlook So what kind of cover design do I like? As much as it pains me to say, I like the cover to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. The story isn't great and the typeface is blah, but the ripped crop of the Mona Lisa is kind of edgy. The various covers of Baudolino by Umberto Eco are pretty cool. Although I haven't read this book, I liked the Jody Lee cover to Mercedes Lackey's The Black Swan enough that I once had it as wallpaper on my computer. And I particularly like Thomas Canty's covers (some scans here). There were also a series of abstract British science fiction covers (here) which were really awesome. Charles Stross also has some neat covers. In short, I prefer covers with a distinctive style yet are not cliche. Addendum: On the interior stuff--I'm pretty neutral about the typefaces of the story. I'm usually amused by any illustrations within the text and plates found in non-fiction works are always informative. But when the words are in any other color than black (especially if it's red), it becomes a pain. The Thursday Threesome: Something old, Something new, Something borrowed, Something blue Onesome: Something old- Do you have anything that you've owned simply forever? A cherished childhood toy, an antique handed down through the family? ...the family Bible? I don't remember whether it was my uncle, a great-uncle, or some cousin twice removed who gave it to me, but it's a stuffed raccoon with a music box inside. Twosome: Something new- Buy anything new lately? Does yogurt count? Threesome: Something borrowed- Have you ever borrowed an item and never returned it? Not that I recall. Bonus: Something blue- Can you see anything blue from where you are? What is it? Your website. If not counting anything on the computer, then it's a folder on my desk. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:44 AM : Oh, Great This is probably one of the few times when I'm glad I'm in lab at freakishly early hours. It's much easier to navigate blizzard struck roads when there's no one else on the roads. Now the question is: can I get out of a snow-covered school at the end of the day? [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 6:44 AM : Tuesday, March 25, 2008 Those Pesky Numbers I generally do well enough that when grade time rolls around I don't go into full blown panic mode, but there's one thing I really dislike, even when I find myself at or near the top of the heap. That is: the posting of everyone's grades. I suppose it might be useful when a curve is involved, but still--it wouldn't hurt to have posted some averages and standard deviations instead. I don't care about other people's grades. More importantly, I don't want other people to know about my grades. It's like telling some missionaries you bump into at the local Safeway your home address. That's just asking for trouble. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:42 PM : When to Find the Time to Read The 2008 Hugo Nomination List is up and I haven't read any of this stuff. I recognize all the names though. Does that count? Well, I have no excuse not to read the stories already online. Definitely want to read the one by Ted Chiang and I'll have to search for the one by Connie Willis. With the number of entries from Asimov's, it makes me wonder if I should subscribe to it again. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:54 PM : Sunday, March 23, 2008 Amusement at the Grocery Store Well, that's the first time I've seen a woman stuff several pounds of Easter candy into a salad spinner just to avoid using a shopping bag. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:50 PM : Finally, Pictures from the Center of the Universe   Taking pictures of manhole covers would be too cliche. So I'm showing some other stuff.Earlier this month, I decided to visit Wallace which was part spur-of-the-moment and partially planned. It was spur-of-the-moment because I came across this small town on some random internet searching and it was partially planned because I wanted to go on a day during spring break on which it was not snowing. Of course, that didn't prevent snow from wreaking some havoc anyway. After getting out of lab at 6:30 AM, I took US-95 north to Coeur D'Alene and then I-90 east to my destination. Sure, this was a couple hours of driving, but it was no hardship. The scenery, especially as the sun bloomed from dawn to early morning, was a revelation. How can the poetic soul not be swayed by the swelling ground crowned by evergreens and little spoiled by human detritus? I-90 as it went through the steeply graded Fourth of July Pass at 70 mph could have been terrifying. But it was exhilarating. Something about frosted mountains and clear sky makes one want to fly. I first stopped at Kellogg. At the nadir of tourist influx, the place was half sleepy village, half abandoned ski resort with an empty garish amusement park visible from the highway. Some people may only be comfortable when a crowd is around. I enjoy places where I feel like I'm the only person in the world. After poking around with nothing other than the occasional car coughing past, I stumbled upon a mining accident memorial and a place advertising for mining tours (although it was closed). Then I decided to turn around via a parking lot which deceptively looked like it was covered in a fine layer of snow. And my car got stuck in that hellish brew of one inch white slushy. I spent half an hour spinning my wheels before a passing motorist helped push my car out. Yes, let that be a lesson: don't enter an unplowed parking lot even though there's just a sprinkling of snow. Seemingly inconsequential things can bite you in the ass.    Wallace itself was a cluster of historic buildings nestled in the navel of mountains. And aside from a couple of shady looking characters with trucker hats, was as empty as a ghost town. All of the museums were closed as well as the trinket shops. I did discover a used bookstore, Placer Village Books, which I couldn't resist visiting. The front door warned of tough guard cats although while I was poking around the inventory (surprisingly extensive for a town with only a couple hundred residents) only one cat was briefly interesting in sniffing my fingers and another more neurotic feline peeked at me from behind a rack of thrillers. There was also a cockatiel stationed at the front of the store with delusions that it was a rooster. Cuk-cu-cuk-cu-coo! Cuk-cu-cuk-cu-coo!On another spur-of-the-moment impulse, I decided to visit Murray, another historical mining town. But I never got there because the road I took was a dead end. I did end up driving through Osburn though--a tiny town with a somewhat creepy-looking bar as its focal point and the impression that it's been permanently stuck in the 1950s.  For someone who enjoys hectic soccer mom vacations, these places in the Idaho panhandle may not be ideal destinations--particularly at this time of the year. But for someone who loves the unusual, these last outposts skirting the boundary between civilization and wilderness, where wilderness looms heavily in the background threatening to take back what it once owned, are fascinating. It's not literally the center of the universe, but when you're physically standing at a remote crossroads surrounded on all four sides by chilly, sheer rock, you certainly feel like you are. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 3:51 PM : Saturday, March 22, 2008 Small Tweaks Only of interest to myself, I was fiddling with typefaces as a design element and ended up changing the entrance page which used to have a painting of a valkyrie against a purple background to plain black and white with an abstract balloon thingie. My Nanowrimo-related site got a face-lift because I'm currently enamored with Telegrafico. I also put up a page for Script Frenzy 2008--in case I do end up writing anything for it. And I finally found out the name of an annoying font: Scriptina. I see this thing everywhere and I hate it. Probably as much as Comic Sans. Scriptina screams ultra feminine chic that overshoots its goal for runway and lands into a warehouse filled with expired Valentine candy. It almost makes one want to take multiple shots of indecipherable grunge fonts to wipe it from the brain. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:22 PM : Friday, March 21, 2008 It's Certainly Very Odd I just found out that a younger relative of mine has gotten engaged and I'm feeling sort of odd, like I'm stuck in a time warp. Or I've been thrown into a parallel universe. See, I'm not a particularly nosy person. Quite the opposite. I never really ask how anyone else is doing because I'm too busy trying to get to the next day without going mad from stress. So when I find out something significant has happened to someone, I feel a bit surprised. Not that anyone bothers to inform me of things anyway. Hm. Now I'm thinking about weddings. Particularly how I'm never invited to one, whether it's supposed friends or relatives. I don't blame them. I mean, who wants a loner who is forgettable, non-photogenic, quiet, and conversationally uninteresting at their party? [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:50 PM : Speaking of Movies... Pharyngula, a vocal critic of the intelligent design propaganda film Expelled ever since he got tricked into being in it, got expelled from a screening. But then they let Richard Dawkins through. I'm going to be snickering the entire day. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:51 AM : Thursday, March 20, 2008 Something To Watch For My head is usually buried in the sand when it comes to movies. I haven't been in a movie theater since--well, quite a while. During winter break, my sister was trying to drag me to a showing of Sweeney Todd, but I resisted. I did manage to watch Stardust on DVD, though. It was entertaining fantasy-lite, but it didn't really whet my appetite for other films. Right before it came out, another grad student was telling me how psyched she was about The Golden Compass. His Dark Materials is totally on my personal list for great fantasy, but glimpses of the movie trailer did nothing for me. I think it was the casting of Nicole Kidman that turned me off--adding Kidman to almost any movie is like injecting Botox into someone who mistakenly wandered into a clinic on his way to the Smithsonian. (So it's no surprise that I've still not seen it.) Anyways, most trailers usually leave me feeling unsatisfied. But I recently saw one for The Fall. All I can say is: Wow. I want to see that. Now. And it has Charles Darwin! How can you go wrong with Charles Darwin? [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:32 PM : Memes Booking Through Thursday: The End You’ve just reached the end of a book . . . what do you do now? Savor and muse over the book? Dive right into the next one? Go take the dog for a walk, the kids to the park, before even thinking about the next book you’re going to read? What? It's a mix between my mood at the time and an author's competence. If the book has a definite end and I find it to be worthwhile or entertaining, I would probably wait a bit (at least until the next day) before starting another book. If it has a definite end and is bad, I might do several things--immediately start another book in an attempt to wipe it from my mind, stop reading for a couple days in disgust, or write a review of it. If I like the book and it's to be continued, I generally want to read the next book right away. Sometimes I already have the sequel on hand so that starting immediately is not a problem. But when I don't, I just have to put up with the frustration of waiting. And if the book is mediocre or bad, I really have no inclination to find the next book unless I've read something positive somewhere indicating that the author is getting better. The Thursday Threesome: Anyone can miss a Day Onesome: Anyone-- Has anyone made an impression on you lately? No, not on the national level, but at work or school or just 'around'. ...or even here on the web? Not really. Just the same people at school. And I've been too busy to be scouring the web for new and interesting weblogs. Twosome: can Miss-- Speaking of webbish things (and of course we are!), what types of things do you take a miss on at your place and chose not to post about? Just curious... There are a lot of things I don't post about. Generally, I stay away from potentially inflammatory topics like politics. Threesome: a Day-- On a similar note: do you post every day? ...or just whenever? ...or is every session at the computer a spur to work up a little something? I have to be motivated to post something. And have the time to, of course. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 5:30 AM : Wednesday, March 19, 2008 Vague Thoughts About Genre I came about this through reading Arthur C. Clarke's obituary on Locus Online. After I read that, I was browsing through the lists of recent books and came across a fantasy anthology entitled The New Weird--which is actually named after a subgenre that's really about crossing genres. Sort of like slipstream and magic realism except there's more vigorous mixing between the science fiction, fantasy, and horror before the edging out towards literary. I already had a vague idea of what New Weird was, but I went digging around and found an interesting discussion from 2003 about it (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5). Anyways, can you even imagine a bookstore dedicating a section to New Weird? Or maybe it would be more amusing if it was just labeled "Weird Stuff." How awesome would it be to respond to a question about your favorite genre by just saying, "I like Weird Stuff!" [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 7:17 PM : Hey! Tangled Bank #101 is up this week at Tangled Up in Blue Guy. Go read it and get your biweekly dose of science. (Horses! Hawks! HIV!) On a completely unrelated note, I just want to say I have deadlines up to my ears at the moment. And I'm really, really tired. The smoke detector in my apartment decided to have a field day between 2:30 to 5:00 AM for no apparent reason. (It wasn't the battery. That was the first thing I checked.) So sleep--non-existent. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 1:23 PM : Thursday, March 13, 2008 Memes Booking Through Thursday: Playing Editor How about a chance to play editor-in-chief? Fill in the blanks: __________ would have been a much better book if ______________________. I usually don't talk about books I don't finish, let alone books I've read a couple of pages and had the urge to throw out the window and hope that a random passing rabid dog comes by and rips it to shreds, but here it is: I picked up Vicki Lewis Thompson's My Nerdy Valentine because there were nerds(!) and I found a previous book (Nerd Gone Wild) amusing. The beginning, however, wasn't very interesting despite the crazy situations, so I skipped to the end. That's when I got really irritated because one of my pet peeves was hit squarely in the eye--the motif of a supposedly smart heroine doing something stupid. In this case, the heroine was making a stupid decision which didn't jive with the set up in the beginning. To be more specific: the reader is told at the start that the heroine is giving up boyfriends to concentrate on academics and getting into grad school. Because this is a romance, the reader knows that the heroine is going to fall in love with somebody. Whether or not she lets a relationship get in the way of her academic goals (again) is the main conflict (well, there's also this part about a stalker--but this part of the plot aids nothing in character development). Then, at the end, the heroine decides to give up Harvard to be with her boyfriend. Has she not learned anything?!! Okay, so her decision is actually a set up so that the hero can surprise her with the fact that he's moved to Boston so that she can go to Harvard and live with him at the same time. But I still don't like this sort of emotional maneuvering. Granted, I'm a bit biased on these kind of things. I wouldn't give up grad school just to play house with some guy. I know other people who have given up grad school to get an MRS degree instead, but then again, I also know people who have managed relationships and school at the same time successfully. So to answer the question on how to make this a better book--the heroine should have continued pursuing her goals despite her feelings. Oh, and the beginning could have been less lobotomy-inducing. I mean, there's outrageousness, but then there's over-the-top... The Thursday Threesome: Insomnia, the Cure for Sleep Onesome: Insomnia-- Ever have it? Some do and some don't, but have you ever been hounded awake for that endless hour after hour with no hope of sleep? ...or does the very act of touching head to pillow put you out for the count? Sure. Sometimes I have difficulty getting to sleep if it's really hot or I'm really stressed. Twosome: the cure-- Hey, if you do have the occasional bout or chronic insomnia, what do you do about it? Work? Read? Try cures? Hmmm... Did you ever find one that worked? No, I haven't tried any cures. Threesome: for sleep-- Female/male, young/not so young, we all need varying amounts of sleep. What's your personal sleep cycle? Five hours? Ten hours? ...and if you had a choice, what would be your personal sleep cycle? ...and yes, "All day long" is a valid answer. Sleep cycle? What is that? More seriously, I usually get about six or seven hours with all-nighters (due to experiments in lab) thrown in here and there. I suppose eight hours would be optimal, but many times, I wish I could function on less. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:36 AM : Wednesday, March 12, 2008 Thirteen Miles From Montana Script Frenzy is in April? What a horrible month (for me anyway since I have so much to do)--even worse than June which they did last year. I'm probably not going to do this, but if anyone reading this blog has writerly aspirations and copious amounts of spare time next month, well here you go. Oh, and despite the proximity, I didn't go to Montana today. I mean, it was there, but I had no idea what I would do if I got there. Besides, I got stuck in snow on my way to The Center of the Universe, so of course I was a bit leery about traveling on an unknown stretch of I-90. More about that late Friday or Saturday, once I get the pictures downloaded from my ancient digital camera. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 11:12 PM : Thursday, March 06, 2008 Various Things Booking Through Thursday: Hero Who is your favorite male lead character? And why? This is a really hard question because I don't think of male characters in terms of being favorite or likable or even interesting. But are they relatable? The first one that popped into my head was Will from The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper. I wouldn't say Will is my favorite, he just represents the kind of story I liked reading during my preteens--where some seemingly ordinary kid gets swept up into something extraordinary. The second character who came to mind was Ghairen, the titular poison master in Liz William's The Poison Master. He isn't the main character, but he is a major character. Ghairen is an example of a character I wouldn't get annoyed with--ambiguous, complex, dangerous. Part of his appeal, I think, is that he was a bit of an unknown quantity. The Thursday Threesome :Choreography: The art of symbolically representing dancing Onesome: Choreography: What do you choreograph in your life? Your morning routine? The dinner ritual? How you study? What is 'designed' by you? My life isn't choreographed. Yes, I have meals at approximately the usual times and try to go to bed and wake up consistently, but sometimes, that doesn't happen. Twosome: The art of symbolically: Art? Hmmmm... Sure, what do you like to have? ...or do you? ...but how about that little symbol you keep on your desk or headboard? The one you keep because??? I mean, if you can share that... I have no art at home. It's just stark white walls. Threesome: representing dancing: No, not 'do you dance?' (although that's fine too!); rather, which type(s) of dancing will you stop and watch for a moment? Ballroom? Swing? Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey? I watched one of those ballroom competitions on PBS once. Otherwise, I suppose I could care less. Tangled Bank #100: Bad Flu Edition. Wow, 100 already? Anyways, go read some interesting science articles! And, all the way at the end where no one will be bothering to read: I have a short story (The Nurturing Instinct) out in Ballista. Too bad I can't make the launch party. It's in the UK and there's this thing called LAB... [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 11:26 AM : Monday, March 03, 2008 Obsessions Over the weekend, I found out that the Center of the Universe was a mere 134 miles away. At least according to Google Maps. With a moniker like that, of course I want to visit. Even if it's just to take a picture of a manhole cover. So I'm constantly checking the weather conditions, hoping that there will be a nice day some time next week. This coming weekend, however, is looking pretty crummy. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 8:54 PM : Saturday, March 01, 2008 Fiddling Around I just installed Open Office and am currently pushing buttons to familiarize myself with it. I also added an extension, Zotero, which is sort of a reference manager/bibliographic doohickey. Still scratching my head over where Zotero is hidden on Open Office. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 9:28 PM : |
