Friday, June 29, 2012

109 - Seriously?

Depending on the service you choose, the forecast for the weekend here locally is calling for a high between 106 and 109 degrees Fahrenheit (that's around 42 for all you Celsius lovers). To say the least, that's a bit warmer than normal for these parts.

I'm not too stressed about it, I'm not planning on spending the next few days blacktopping my driveway or anything, so I should survive.

But, having all that hot weather should afford me some much needed time to not go outside.

On a side note, I picked up a new photo app for my phone. I wanted to play with the filters and stuff and I grabbed one of my A-Z sketches to play around. I like how the app was able to age the image. That would have taken me some time to duplicate in photoshop. It's cool that I can just hit the vintage button on my phone and all of a sudden it looks old.

I also realize that isn't exactly the latest thing in the world, but it's done such a good job that I just had to mention it.

I was also given an award last week. Actually, I've been given two in the past few months. I want to thank both SL Hennessy and Trisha for their recent awards. I tend to be the place that awards go to die, and I suspect that is the case here, but I really, really appreciate that I was chosen. Thanks!

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Mid-Year Update - And I Suck at Blogging!


My first week back from vacation was a trying time. I think most of my problem is that I suffer from the same issue that Neo did in the first Matrix movie. Namely, the world I live in when I’m at work doesn’t seem real to me. The real world is the one in which I lie on the beach and drink fruity alcohol most of the time between trips to the men’s room, seafood buffets, and naps.

So, until Laurence Fishburne shows up with a handful of pills and says I can return to the ‘real world’, I think I’m going to just have to get used to the feeling like things are amiss.  

As it stands though, I have been trying to get back into the grove, not only for work and home life, but for online things and writing. I figured I should take a few moments and share some minutia that I’m sure no one is interested in… I'm sure everyone's thrilled.

First, I’ve come to realize over the course of the past year or so that I’ve been blogging at the expense of writing. I’m sure anyone who was keeping track of my online activities has noticed that since the end of the A-Z challenge I’ve been spotty at best, and non-existent at my worst. It’s just been me trying to find a balance that allows me to actually write, do artsy things, and not to mention hang out with the family, in the short time I have daily to do such things.

So, blogging has been on the outs, I’ve been posting some, but visiting infrequently. I’m going to try to be post consistently – twice per week – and then devote 30 minutes or so daily to visiting others. I know from experience that that might not get me around to too many places, but committing to 30 minutes is better than crossing my fingers and wishing for the best.

BUT – I HAVE BEEN WRITING, so all that extra time I’ve been freeing up hasn’t been a waste. And if anyone recalls, I had a lot of goals I posted at the beginning of the year regarding my writing. So, here’s my mid-year update: I’ve been doing a lot of short stories, and I’ve been submitting them to markets as I deem them to be appropriate… so far I’ve gotten only a ton of rejections, but at the same time, I’ve been submitting exclusively to the largest and most prestigious markets first, and working my way down from there. My goal was to write and submit at least a story a month. So far in 2012 I’ve written 10 short stories.

I have also been working on a novella with the intent to self-publish. Yay for me. I wrote it last year and thought it was pretty good then, but I was having this one little problem, I put it away for a few months and picked it back up a month or so ago. It was much rougher than I thought it was, but because I loved the story so much I decided that instead of chucking it, I’d do a complete rewrite. I’m in the middle of that now. It’s going much better…

I hope.

And finally, I’ve also been working on my Epic Fantasy novel – which I’m thinking might end up taking a year or so or working on it before I can even think of asking someone to consider critiquing it (and I don’t want to even think about how to go about that, it’d be a huge commitment to ask of anyone). That thing is more complex story wise than anything I’ve ever tried to write before - half a dozen viewpoint characters, each with his or her own arc, and a whole world history and magic system to develop. If the way the first draft is unfolding holds true, then this will easily be the two and a half times longer than any other piece of fiction I’ve ever written.

That’s a lot of words to put towards something you’re not entirely sure you can pull off. But whatever, I’ve always been a weak plotter and I think this is forcing me to make sure I am careful and meticulous with it. No better way to learn than to do.

And also, I think it’s something I would do even if I knew now that no one would ever be interested in it. It’s a story I feel like I need to get out.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Prometheus!

I generally don't review movies here. Mostly because I generally have no real opinions about movies other than either liking them or not. I also realize that I'm a bit late to the game on this one, but I didn't get to see this the weekend it came out because I was in this little town in Texas that, while awesome, wasn't exactly brimming with movie theaters.

Regardless of when I saw the movie, in this case, well, I actually have thoughts about it, real thoughts.

Pretty
1) This movie was awesome.

2) This movie makes no sense.

Well, that's about it. Thanks for reading. Actually, I do think it makes some sense, but not enough of it. I did read this article/blog post the other day about how at one point in an earlier draft of the script, Jesus was an emissary from the aliens and his crucifixion somehow psychically made the alien monsters from the Alien movies... or something. It's fair to say that there was some really weird religious motifs throughout the movie as it was presented. I recommend everyone that's seen the movie and has thought about its bizarreness read it.

Click...HERE ... to read the article.


Tuesday, June 19, 2012

I've Been Around the World... And the Whole Place Stinks


I’m back. Wait, did you even know I was gone? Well, I was. Now I’m back. I spent a week and a half gallivanting through the South in the car with the family. Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas. I came away with a few thoughts.

1)      Alabama has the worst bathrooms in the United States. Period. This cannot be questioned. If you doubt me, drive through the state and stop to use the restrooms while there.
This isn't the only one, either. 

2)      Texas has the most insane speed limits I’ve ever seen. 70mph through neighborhoods? Believe it. Folks are putting out their trash and mowing their grass in what looks a lot like the middle of a Nascar Track. Scary.

3)      Louisiana has the worst traffic management when doing road work I've experienced. I drove through Baton Rouge and we got stuck in the worst traffic jam I’ve been through, maybe ever. Cars were backed up for miles and miles, bumper to bumper, at a dead stop. Why? Because someone decided to repaint the stripes on the road. 4 lanes were shut down for this. Not cool, Louisiana, not cool.

4)      I put more than 2000 miles on my car. Damn.

5)      I got burnt, despite copious amounts of sunblock AND spending most of my time outdoors underneath a parasol.

6)      I probably shouldn’t have used the word parasol. I think it undermines my Action Hero image.

7)      I bet I don’t have an Action Hero image anyway. But the parasol thing isn’t helping me cultivate one. And I should probably stop talking about it.

8)      Also in Texas, apparently it’s cool to have a slaughterhouse right there in your back yard. Complete with bloody tools. And they wonder why they have a reputation for chainsaw massacres.
Not creepy at all! Now hand me that bloody sawblade.

So, in conclusion, if you’re in Texas, the speed limit is 70 pretty much anywhere you go, probably because if you stop, you’re going to be near someone wielding an axe of rifle. So the powers that be decided it's best to just keep you moving.

In Alabama, don’t stop to use the restroom.

In Louisiana, make sure you’ve used the restroom before you get there, because they’ll keep you in traffic for as long as they can.

In Georgia or Mississippi, well, I’ve not got anything to say about them. I enjoyed my trip, but it’s good to be home.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Sketcher Girl Studios!

I met Vic Caswell during the A-Z Blogfest this April and fell in love with that girl's skills as an artist. Check out her official grand opening below. Also, I should be in the middle of our family trip deep into the heart of Texas. Nobody break into my house and steal my stuff.


GRAND OPENING!!!!
Today is the day that Sketcher Girl Studios, LLC officially opens for business!

In celebration of this momentous event, Vic Caswell (owner/operator) is hosting a give-a-way.
Using the "Contact Us" form on the site, send her the secret word from the end of this post and you'll be entered to win.

Sketcher Girl Studios is a freelance illustration company with a focus on book cover design.  Vic Caswell has produced the covers of Emily White's debut novel ELEMENTAL, as well as it's sequel FAE (release date not announced yet), and Kimberly Ann Miller's debut novel TRIANGLES (releasing June 2013).

SGStudios is passionate about books and getting them out there and into the hands of the readers who will love them.  Vic will read your book.  She will work with you to ensure that the design you end up with is something you love.  She doesn't use stock photography, so you are guaranteed an image that is original and she offers full legal usage of her cover images.  So, if you want to print it on swag, and sell that, the money goes straight to you.

Her prices are competitive- affordable for small press publishers as well as self-publishers.

She also provides other services- such as: tattoo design, logo design, header design, artistic prints, children's book illustration, and pretty much anything illustration that you can think up.

Stop by and drop the secret word: Mischief, for your chance to win one of these nifty prizes...

such as:   postcard sized prints of  her work titled PERCHED CREATURE, one of two copies of ELEMENTAL by Emily White, a ten dollar Amazon gift card, an original painting, and  free labor on a book cover (costs may be incurred for props/ models/ wardrobe) and more!

Links:
Sketcher Girl Studios
SGS on Facebook

Testimonials:
Vic Caswell is brilliant! Not only is she super easy to work with, but the things she comes up with are so amazing. She was able to take the half-coherent ideas I was kind of able to articulate and come up with exactly what I was thinking of. I loved working with her on both my books' covers and I can't wait to work with her again!- Emily White (author of ELEMENTAL from Spencer Hill Press)

"I'm loving my new logo!!! Victoria Caswell did a MARVELOUS job and was such a joy to work with. She made the process effortless and I swear she could read my mind. So, if you need some work done, please send it her way! You won't be sorry!" ♥ Nancy  Fennell (owner of Scents of Adventure)


****

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Insecure Writers - May Edition!


IWSG - May edition.

During the month of May, rejections for stories submitted through the first half of the year began pouring in. And I do mean pouring. I know writers can struggle with confidence, and I think I can struggle more than most. So my precious, fragile ego took quite the beating.

It does make me nervous, I was thinking that I might be getting close in my writing, approaching the oft-coveted ability to take a story and make the reader get carried away with it. Sigh. So, what does that mean for me? Well, the obvious thing that happens is that I take my insecurity to a whole new level. I supposed I've got a lot of work to do.

So, if it weren't for the great Alex J Cavanaugh, and his Insecure Writer's Support Group, I'd be all alone in my misery. It's good to know there are others out there that allow me the opportunity to vent.

Thanks Alex. Thanks everyone.




Monday, June 4, 2012

Big, Long, and Pointless... An Ode to Pagelism


DisclaimerThis post is long and pointless. It’s to answer points brought up by Briane Pagel in a comment to something I had posted elsewhere on the internet. Yes, a post so self-referential only I, and maybe Briane, will be able to follow. Do yourselves a favor and stop reading. It’s really that boring. You won’t hurt my feelings.

Enrico Fermi was considered by many contemporaries as, perhaps, the smartest man alive during his time as a citizen of earth. He certainly had a reputation as being the quickest wit in the western world. The guy was no dummy.

Briane Pagel is also no dummy. And he and Fermi are is a disagreement regarding what, ironically, might end up being Fermi’s lasting contribution to pop culture (Not many folks can name off Fermi’s scientific contributions). It’s a shame, but that’s just how it works.

So, since that mega-mind of insight can no longer defend himself, I have to take it upon myself to do so in his behalf. That’s a little like Lois Lane protecting Superman I suppose. But, she must have been doing something right because she did have her very own comic book for a while, so if I were to stretch this analogy well beyond its breaking point, that means I might not be capable of a real defense but that won’t stop me from being in the middle of things anyway. I hope my time spent in the 90’s as a semi-professional internet debater will allow me to out argue Briane, the ever famous lawyer who has successfully sued to have more blue M&M’s per package (he didn’t actually do that, but he could have). I plan to mask my ignorance with name calling and subtle misdirections.

Where are all the humans?
I made my peace with that part of me a long time ago. It’s how I win disagreements. It’s all I’ve got.

Anyhow, about a year ago I wrote a brief blog post about the Fermi Paradox for author Stephen Tremp’s blog. Last week he reposted it on the A-Z challenge blog as part of his ongoing series about aliens. When Mr Briane Pagel, esquire, mentioned to me on Twitter that he is scared of my super spider of doom that I put up last week, I told him to please check out my post over at the A-Z blog.

And boy, he sure did. After reading, he went on to look at each of my points made there to try to explain why there is no paradox. Which, whether he means to or not, indicates that I’ve wasted a whole lot of my brainpower over the years (*ahem* decades) thinking about a paradox that doesn’t exist.

In case you’re wonder what that paradox is we’re discussing, it’s the conundrum surrounding the lack of alien invasions humanity has experienced… you’ll just have to go find my original post if you really want more.

So, according to Braine, I could have been putting my not-so-considerable mental might towards combating disease, or thinking about the mystery of the circle… instead, it’s all wasted – much like that time I wasted the better part of a year exploring this riddle:

Three weary travelers stop by an inn one night, looking for lodging. They ask the innkeeper for a room to share. The innkeeper charges them $30 for the room. Each man contributes $10.

Then men make their way to their single room, and the innkeeper chuckles because he’s made money off the imbeciles, the room was supposed to be $25 dollars.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one… anyone?

Anyone?

Well, the innkeep’s wife discovered his deceit, and forced her wicked husband to return the $5 dollars he stole. The innkeeper, as well as being a crook, was also bad with math, and didn’t know how he could split the five dollars three ways.

So the wicked, greedy man, slipped $2 into his pocket and knocked on the men’s room. He proudly told them that they received the group rate and the cost of the room was only $9 per person. He hands them each a dollar refund and walks away, happy that he’s made them happy, and happy that he’s made his wife happy, and happy that he’s made himself happy.

Except, there was just one little thing.

Each man ended up paying $9 for their share – for a total of $27.

He had $2 in his pocket.

That’s $29… There is a dollar missing. Where did that missing dollar go?

Okay, now where was I? Oh yes, Briane thinks I’m wasting my time thinking about the mysteries of the universe. He made many, many points, several of which I’m sure are red herrings, intended to wear me out should I go through them one at a time. Of course, that makes me want to do just that.

Just remember, my goal isn’t to win - it’s to prove he’s wrong. Wait, that didn’t come out right. I mean, my goal is to demonstrate why I disagree with his logic.

Pagel point #1: Pagel admires me for thinking about ‘this stuff.’

My Rebut: That sounds suspiciously like my mother, who admires me for my willingness to continue to draw pictures of men who wear capes and pirate boots during my spare time, despite the fact that I’m a middle aged man. Yes, quite admirable.

Pagel point #2: Humans arose 2.7 million years ago.

My Rebut: Paul Simon might not be the most rigorously scientific lyricist. I appreciate that he wrote Call me Al and I love that song. So I am all for giving him respect. However, the range of dates for when humans first appear (meaning something like modern humans, that have a cranial capacity that is more or less indistinguishable from our own) is around 200,000- 400,000 years ago. That’s just morphologically indistinguishable from modern humans, things like cave paintings, jewelry, trinkets (like those ugly, headless, fertility goddesses) they all show up between 30k – 50k years ago. Some folks think that’s when we really started developing language and the ability to discuss abstract concepts, a key component in intelligence. Since Briane seems to be basing a lot of his argument on that date… it’s feels like it would be significant to point out that 2.7 million years seems to be pretty arbitrary.

Pagel point #3: Life arose 2.7 million years ago.

My Rebut: Sigh. Paul Simon again? Dammit, quit using his song lyrics like they’re science textbooks.  I didn’t pass calculus by memorizing the lyrics to Wake up, Little Susie. Unless your point is that humans arose at the same moment that life itself did, I’m not sure if I follow here. Did you mean to say that?

Again, the dates for Life on earth go back at least to the oldest rocks we’ve found. The story that most often gets told by sciency types (that means actual scientists, not singer/songwriters) is that as soon as the earth cooled enough for the rocks to solidify, something was living there.

Now that’s interesting, and it does lead to making assumptions.

Like, for just under 4 billion years (that’s billion with a ‘B’ in front, not an ‘M’) of things living on earth and we’ve only been unequivocally human for maybe 40,000. We’ve only had enough understanding of how the universe works in order to send a hunk of metal into orbit in the past 50 years.

So I agree with his larger point. Being toolmakers that are interested in math, science, radio dishes, and spaceships, is not inevitable. Steven J Gould fought hard to fight the common belief that intelligence is the inevitable conclusion of evolution. His take (which I agree with) is that intelligence is more of an experiment (not a guided one, it’s just a form of speech he used). His point that instead of nature investing all of its resources into making us faster, stronger, armor plated, better at hiding, etc., it made us smarter. In our case, it worked. It worked so well that it makes sense to think that if it happened before, at any time, we’d see evidence of that in the fossil record.

But after Briane’s conversation about the Drake equation a few weeks ago, that might be enough of a clue about how the universe works (regarding the emergence of intelligence) to put a tentative number in that part of the equation (if a planet that has life on it, what is the likely hood it will develop technology? Why, that would be once every four billion years).

Pagel point #4: Conditions for life have not been optimal for much of the time of the universe.

This point which actually was made before points 2 and 3, but I skipped this and am coming back to it now.

I do follow, common wisdom is that Sol is a third generation star. That means that the first stars formed, blowed up, then next generation stars formed, which included a lot more stuff than simple hydrogen and a bit of helium. Second gen stars had traces of heavy elements, and third gen stars had way more.

Continuing to follow that old wisdom, first gen stars probably wouldn’t have planets, well, they wouldn’t have rocky planets. Any life that might have arisen during this time wouldn’t have the raw materials they needed to build stuff (well, and there would have been a real lack of much of anything outside of Hydrogen, Helium, and just a touch of Lithium).

But the lifetimes of those first generation stars were relatively short when compared to second and third gen. Second gen stars could have had rocky worlds, and could have something vaguely earthlike arising billions of years before our solar system formed. It wouldn’t have to happen frequently, we’re just talking about it happening at all - anywhere.

And by anywhere, I mean, there are a few hundred billion stars in the Milky Way alone. We know that out of the only solar system we’ve explored (our own) intelligent life showed up at least once. If we start playing a numbers game again that puts the odds of intelligent life showing up at about once for every 8 planets (if we can watch them for 4 billion years).

I’m relatively confident that I’m several orders of magnitude off in that calculation, but whatever. The point is that science makes assumptions, too, assumptions that many people don’t like, but these are just default assumptions that get made when there is a severe lack of data on a subject (for example, if we find microbial life on Venus, Mars, Europa, Titan and Enceladus  - all of which some scientists think is a real possibility, then we have to change our assumptions to match (once in four billion years no longer seems accurate if life has existed in those other places that long and we aren’t seeing their equivalent to Gilligan’s Island reruns, so we have to assume they’re not that smart. So our odds of intelligence emerging on planets with life on them drop to one out of six (per four billion years) – and we could probably note that life only appears on bodies between the sizes of Enceladus and Earth – we can ignore the gas giants, but then we’d have to include moons, figure out if the appearance of water is the common factor, of just a soluble liquid that can serve as a medium for chemistry to take place.

XKCD!!


Or whatever, that’s just with info from our solar system. What about all those extra solar planets that keep turning up? Again, the more data we can collect, the more confidence we can have in our assumptions.

One of those assumptions, and the most important one for us here today, is called the Copernican principal. The reason it’s important is that it makes the assumption that whatever we observe about a phenomena is probably not unusual.

It’s like, if I traveled to northern Arizona and saw a McDonald’s, if I were to order a hamburger there I can assume that it will serve as an indicator of what a hamburger purchased at an Idaho McDonald’s would be like.

It’s an assumption, but that assumption is that when we observe something, like our solar system, that we are not seeing something terribly uncommon. Assumptions aren’t bad things in of themselves; it’s assuming that things are uncommon without bothering to check to see if those assumptions are valid that leads to funky conclusions.

If Briane wanted to dive into my analogy and tear it apart, he could. Analogies only really work as illustrative tools – they tend to fall apart if examined closely. But since we’re talking about McDonalds burgers, he might question why we would assume that there were any other McDonalds anywhere else in the universe if we only know of one. And that is a good point. Or he could argue that other McDonald’s are extremely similar in form and function, and use that to point out his idea about all intelligent life in the cosmos being at the same technological place in their development. And that would be another good point. But again, the idea is for you to see what I want you to see, not what he wants you to. And that also shows why using analogy to explain things isn’t always a good idea.

Why did I go on like that? I forgot what point I was trying to make. So I actually agree with his statement thatthe laws of physics and chemistry are the same throughout the cosmos – But that doesn’t mean that all life in the universe started at the exact same time 2.7 million years ago and all life followed an identical evolutionary path – again, to assume that is the case is surely some sort of logical fallacy. I know that’s the way Star Trek implies it goes, but I don’t buy it. I mean, here on earth, we’ve got people that live in societies that are little changed from what they were like ten thousand years ago. But we also have people that live in outer space too. That’s a great deal of disparity between folks of the same species. It doesn’t follow that an entirely alien society would be on par with us. If fact, that would be surprising in the extreme.

I’d be much more comfortable with some sort of universal law that said once a species discovers quantum theory they blow themselves up in a nuclear disaster, or a nano-bots run amok scenario.

I know there were other points he made, especially the one about the island hopping pacific islanders – and that’s something I’d really like to explore in some detail, but I can’t now, because A) I don’t like arguing analogies for reasons I stated before, and B) because I mostly don’t have the time. Mostly, it’s B. Actually, it’s entirely B. In fact, I’m tempted to say reason A is a lie. But that’s such a strong word, I think I’ll stick to saying that it’s a reason I don’t want to talk about it, but it’s really not.

Hell, working on this post in starts and stops for several days and I’ve ended up skipping over tons of stuff I would have liked to have said – but since they would require me actually looking stuff up I decided to leave them alone. Yes, I would have gone on for much, much longer, had I only had the time/desire/motivation/lack-of-laziness.

However, I'll unfairly end with this - the pacific islander analogy was the right one to use - Fermi didn't use that one, I did. Although I'm sure I stole it from somebody. But I've totally ran out of gas... I would love to go over this in more detail, so Briane, feel free to call start a series on these... I'll give you a guest post if you want.

In conclusion, I disagree with Briane’s disagreement of my original post, but I choose not to truly articulate why because of the $29 dollar riddle I mentioned earlier. Because, the point of that riddle is that if you read it and you don’t think it’s a paradox, then you need to go back and read it over and over until it stops making sense.