Hodgepodge

Was hunting through the mess around my desk for CDs I'd borrowed from our choir director--he couldn't believe I wasn't a great fan of Bruckner and Sibelius (Sibelius somewhat, but was unfamiliar with Bruckner.   I listened several times but these pieces didn't do much for me--scattered moments of beauty or grandeur but connected by tracts of "Oh, well...")  

And I spotted a box of GS cookies, Thin Mints.  I was sure it was empty.  I pulled it out from under the papers, books, CDs...and it was unopened!!  Full of Thin Mints!!  Whoopee! 

Note the past tense: WAS unopened.   Now open.  Now in the process of disappearing.   The sound of munching is heard in the house.

There's a special bonus feature in the hardcover release of Farscape: Uncharted Tales Volume 1: D'Argo's Lament -- a Farscape short story by yours truly! The story in Lament is a semi-sequel to a short story I wrote called "Many a Mile to Freedom," which appeared in the very first issue of Farscape: The Official Magazine in 2001. If you pick up the hardcover, you can read that story, which has been reprinted in the back of the volume!

Veterans Day
Remembrance Day (Canada)

THE SUSTAINING POWER OF ICE

The sustaining power of ice at various degrees of thickness:

At a thickness of two inches, will support a man.
At a thickness of four inches, will support a man on horseback.
At a thickness of six inches, will support temas with moderate loads.
At a thickness of eight inches, will support heavy loads.
At a thickness of ten inches, will support 1,000 pounds to the square foot.

---Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889


When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear nad life stands explained.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

40 years of diversity makes Sesame Street a unique destination

Beyond being in sync with the racial realities of young children who have not yet been corrupted by their parents' color-bound politics, Sesame Street modeled the kind of racial idealism we should continually strive for. In Sesame Street's diverse neighborhood, characters always asked questions about why someone looked or acted differently than they did. Their questions were never returned with a north-directed middle finger or someone screaming, "ignorant!" The character was glad to answer the question and tell others about him or herself. I remember Oscar frequently being asked why he was green. Not complaining any more than usual, he was happy to point out that he's not really green, but that he once took a dip in a muddy marsh and hadn't taken a bath since.

Sesame Street wasn't just some idyllic land where no one ever disagreed and everyone steered clear of conflict. It was a place where everyone always talked and continued talking. Disagreements were highlighted, motives were exposed, misunderstandings were clarified and problems were solved. And for all its virtues, what is perhaps most important is that no matter how strange one may be, everyone and anyone was and is always welcome on Sesame Street. Everyone belongs and even the Yip-yip aliens are "one of us."

Notes augmented

We've enhanced and de-bugged Notes. If you haven't tried it yet, now's the time! You can create a private note when you ban multiple users. You can also delete multiple notes at once. Lastly, paid users have the option to add a note (visible only to you) whenever you add or remove a friend (guaranteed to avoid embarrassing social mishaps). If you don't currently have a paid account, you can upgrade now! It only takes a few minutes and costs less than a bad shopping mall haircut (plus, it's way more fashionable)!

Product tweaks and bug kill

1. In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
2. If you sign up to get notifications of the Writer's Block question of the day, you'll now see the daily question in the email notification, so you'll have a little extra time to ponder before you post. You can subscribe to Writers Block notifications here
3. The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
4. If you visit a LiveJournal page and get prompted to log in, you'll be returned to the same page after you sign in (Thanks, Dreamwidth)!
5. If you don't edit the timestamp for an entry at all, the entry timestamp will indicate the time the entry was posted instead of the time the Update Journal page was loaded
6. Comments with paddings/backgrounds render correctly within the comment box (and will no longer wrap outside the box and break frames/margins)

New FCK fixes rich text editor!

1. We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
2. When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds are no longer broken
3. RTE now functions properly in Safari 4.0
4. An extra line/space will not be auto-inserted whenever you switch from RTE to HTML editor
5. The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers

LiveJournal Cares

We’re pleased to introduce you to lj_cares, a new LiveJournal community dedicated to raising awareness and funds for U.S. charitable organizations that improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Each month, we’ll spotlight a nonprofit that is making a significant global impact through medical research, public outreach, and/or humanitarian social programs. Charities will be selected in accordance with the U.S. calendar of national health observances based on a high rating (of over 60%) on Charity Navigator and global scope of impact.

In this, our inaugural month of November, we will celebrate national adoption month by offering a charitable virtual gift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that saves the lives of orphans with life-threatening diseases and places them in loving homes around the world. LiveJournal will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of charitable vgifts (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares and read about how they helped save Baby Kang and the Rainbow Twins from fatal illnesses, who are now thriving in nurturing families. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries gifts in the Virtual Gift shop.

Papered in postcards

A couple of weeks ago, we asked you to send in postcards to surround us with LiveJournal community. Thanks for coming through! We've received postcards all the way from Germany, Finland, and Canada and from all over the US, including Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Indiana, Hawaii, and Oklahoma just to name just a handful. We're thrilled with our improved decor.

Please keep the love coming for one more week by writing to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be drawing the names of ten random contributors next Thursday to win paid account credits!

Photos of the week

We have more dazzling images posted by talented LiveJournal photographers from around the world. We're hoping to span the entire globe, so please continue posting and tagging. Of course, you can also sit back and enjoy the view at lj_photophile.

You can see a sample of this week's gorgeous photos and check out spotlight communities and awesome user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

daisy_knotwise has decided that it is time for Katie to have a haircut. Given that she'll be three years old next week and hasn't yet had one, I suppose she's correct. I especially suppose she's correct given how little Katie likes to have her hair washed and brushed.

But I recall how my father used to cut our hair. One false move and it was time for a crew cut.

I'm hoping Katie didn't squirm too much.

ITEM: Overthinking It discovers that the rate of oil discovery and production in the US is almost IDENTICAL to Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Rock Songs of All Time.

In both cases, industry output peaked in the 60s, and has been on the decline ever since.



Okay, it’s the statistical equivalent of syncing The Dark Side Of The Moon to The Wizard of Oz. But hey, it’s still spooky.

Black gold,

This is dF

( Short stack... )

Can't believe I forgot to post this, especially given both the subject matter and the guest list.....

The Chronic Rift podcast has a Roundtable discussion on the greatest detective who ever lived, Sherlock Holmes, with John and Andrea joined by authors Kevin Lauderdale (Star Trek: Constellations, Cthulhu Unbound) and Laurie R. King (the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series of novels, and also one of my favorite authors). You don't wanna miss this one. Seriously.

The episode is available by subscription off iTunes, or directly from either the Rift web site or the Rift page on Mevio. And please comment either on the forums or at the toll-free number 888-866-9010.

So a while ago—not that long ago, but not yesterday—I made a post about the author/agent relationship, and why I think literary agents are so damn important. I like my agent. I know that state isn't universal, but neither is liking your haircut, and I'm pretty cool with that, too. I try to be mellow when I can.

This morning, I was pointed to a post over on GalleyCat explaining why nobody needs an agent. Apparently, the electronic revolution means that the "middleman" between author and editorial is no longer necessary. Who knew? Or at least, that middleman is on the way to becoming fully outdated. Naturally, at least one literary agency feels differently, and has said as much. I suggest reading both links before continuing, because I, too, feel differently, and will now say as much.

These are the things I do: write books. Make changes according to the requests of my editors. Discuss possible changes with my editors. Review page proofs. Blog. Run blog giveaways of ARCs and published books. Attend conventions. Write outlines and proposals for books I want to write. Play Plants vs. Zombies. Watch TV.

These are the things my agent does: get my books to the editors who are most likely to not only appreciate them, but work with them in a way that is beneficial to both the publishing house and my career. Negotiate advances. Negotiate sub-rights. Protect my interests in areas like audio, comic book, and foreign rights. Make sure that I get paid on time. Follow up with my editors when things are unclear, or when I need more time to finish something. Check in with me to see what space I have on my plate. Understand the industry. Explain things like "co-op" and how marketing budget works. Tell me where my energy needs to be spent, rather than where I necessarily want to spend it.

Beyond the fairly standard notation that many major houses no longer consider submissions from unagented authors, the agent serves a thousand functions that, frankly, I don't have time to deal with. It's possible that I would have time for them, if I wasn't writing four books at once; on the flip side of that, I can also say that if I was dealing with all the functions served by my agent, I wouldn't have time to write four books at once. It all feeds back to a question of resource allocation, and I have chosen to externalize certain resource needs in the form of my agent.

Agents don't just negotiate the size of your advance; they negotiate contracts, which are huge, complex, complicated things. Without an agent to go through the contract and understand it, you need to not only speak the crazy language of literary rights, you need to have strong feelings on all those things. What do you think about comic rights, merchandising rights, foreign rights, audio rights, film rights, the right to construct an amusement park based on your work? What do you think of the time the contract says you'll have to review your page proofs, of the concept of seeing your copyedits, of the way the next work clause is worded? Do you understand half of what I just said? 'Cause honestly, without my agent, I wouldn't, and even now, I'm a little vague on some of the specifics, although I'm learning.

Agents deal with your editors, and can mediate when, say, you miss a deadline because your cat got sick and you just can't cope and what do these people want from you?! Well, they want you to hold to the terms of your contract, and they want you to make a lot of money, because everybody would like to have a lot of money, and if you make a lot of money, so does your publisher. But without that buffer between yourself and the publisher, it's very possible that you could flip out and take somebody's face off, thus ruining the working relationship. Instead, flip out on your agent, and they'll take care of making nice while you hyperventilate in a corner.

A good agent will help your career in a hundred ways...and more, they're very often an excellent gatekeeper, because as soon as you're salable, the agents will be happy to let you know. It's not their job to get you to that point, but once you get yourself there, their job begins, and that job is a hard one. Frankly, it's not a job I'd want to do.

Are literary agents outdated? No. Are literary agents like having the cheat codes to the publishing industry? Yes. You still need to understand what you're doing, but they can make things go a lot more smoothly, and they can keep you from dying too many times before you finish level one. That's more than worth the cost of their commission.

And she's got a rock-solid argument.

• Justice League: Crisis On Two Earths Trailer


• J.J. Abrams + Micronauts = ?????


• You've probably already seen this, but...Titans. Will. Clash. I blame '300', 'Gladiator' and Michael Bay films.


• What's After the Credits

( 'Sheldon' behind the jump... )

Unknown to most, there was one action figure set from the original dozen that were done by Kenner in 1977 for Star Wars, but didn't make the final cut...............

*tee hee*

Yesterday, in the Clash of the Titans thread, the new catchphrase (Moist: "Is that the new catchphrase?") from the trailer, "TITANS... WILL... CLASH", prompted devospice to respond: "AUDIENCES... WILL... SNORE...". Then redneckgaijin started riffing on it:

STARS... WILL.. WAR.

SHAWSHANKS... WILL... REDEEM.

HUDSUCKERS... WILL... PROXY.

APOLLO... WILL... 13.

GOOD... WILL... HUNTING.

This struck me as hilarious. So let's play.

• BOURNES... WILL... CONSPIRE.
• ROCKYS... WILL... BALBOA.
• CITIES... WILL... SIN.
• MEN... WILL... IRON.
• Nothing seemed to work right, but there's gotta be a double involving STARRING... WILL... SMITH. (Jayzus. IMDB says he's not only working on sequels to I, Robot and Hancock [okay, I liked Hancock] but a prequel to I Am Legend.)

Have at it. Keep it to maybe five.

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• 11:44 Today is #boobiewed! Go to Geek Girls Network and learn what you can do to SAVE SECOND BASE! bit.ly/39tMeW #

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Today I had my second voice lesson with  David.   A  lot of singing--my throat's a little sore because a few hours after the lesson was choir practice (another 2 hours of singing) and my throat isn't used to it.   (More water is going to be necessary, clearly!)

BUT...we were doing exercises and then he said that the notes I had just sung so easily and confidently...included "that" F-sharp.   The one that I found terrifying and nearly impossible in the Durufle Requiem when suddenly the altos were told to sing it with the sopranos and most of us couldn't.  I had hit it twice in those weeks, but it was more like hitting than singing.   (It's the F-sharp above C above middle C. )   Moreover, said he, I would find myself singing well above that as things progressed.   The notes he mentioned sound to me like climbing Himalayan peaks, but having embarked on this adventure I'm willing to go as far as my Sherpa guide tells me to.

Then there was a lot of singing phrases and melodies, some freeform ("Just sing--in this range here") and some from music and it was such fun!  And it didn't sound totally sucky, either. 

Unfortunately, by the time we got to the last music we practiced in choir this evening, I was tired and my throat was scratchy, and I had trouble doing a decent D two whole tones below the F-sharp.   Did in fact sound sucky off and on.   Bleh.

But boy do I need to work on my vowels...I thought they were better than they are, alas for me and the habits of a lifetime. 

Yr awesome science lede of the day:




Science: it is awesome.

Further study required,

This is dF

Lou Dobbs, the last of the founding CNN reporters announced that he is leaving the network effective immediately.

How long before he announces a contract with Fox?

Posted by Victoria Strauss for Writer Beware

Some blog posts and articles that piqued my interest over the past few weeks.

Inspired by a silly piece by writer Jeff Rivera on GalleyCat, in which he, the owner of a self-publishing service, and an anonymous author question the usefulness of literary agents, agent Miriam Goderich of Dystel & Goderich provides an eloquent rebuttal: Who Needs an Agent? You Do.

From agent Holly Root: why not to sweat the small stuff. “There’s a ton of ink spilled online over do’s and don’ts for writers, and while I am a firm believer that knowledge is power and all, too much information can be paralyzing, and some of us on this side of the desk are guilty of making it seem much harder than it already is. If you really read and adhered to every.single.thing. every agent said online you would never finish a book or a query letter and if you did it would probably be a bland groupthinked mess, which actually will get you rejections.”

Agent Jennifer Jackson provides some helpful advice on query letters, including this explanation of what your query letter may say about you and your book (query-hating writers, pay heed): “Now, I’m not going to say that it’s not hard to sum up the book that the writer has spent months, or even years, producing in a way that will make someone want to read it. I think it’s a challenge. And you should definitely give it your best shot. Because, yes, the query is an important part of the initial submission. It sets the stage for reading the synopsis and sample pages. It can reveal things such as the writer’s background, whether their approach is professional, how they see their novel, and other intangible gut feeling responses.”

A pair of really informative posts from agent Rachelle Gardner: How Book Royalties Work and Is Your Book Worth It? (covers what commercial publishers spend on book production).

For writers who, like me, are not enamored of the relentless pressure to self-promote, this New Yorker parody of a marketing plan may make you laugh–or cry.

From writer Caroline Hagood, a short essay on writer’s block that I totally relate to. (For me, actually, what Ms. Hagood describes isn’t true block–it’s more the getting stuckness that I think all writers experience from time to time [and I experience a lot]. True block–the absolute dearth not just of ideas, but of words–is something else again.)

Speaking of being stuck: from Colson Whitehead and the New York Times, some not-exactly-serious ideas for what to write next.

Mirrored from SFWA | Comment at SFWA

Because it is two days until WindyCon, I should have expected that the hard drive in my main home machine -- the one with all the interesting data on it, including the Girl Genius presentation that I spent two hours working on last night -- would pick this moment to fail. *sigh*

Fortunately, that hard drive is part of a mirrored pair, so I've recovered the presentation from the working drive and will shut this down in just a minute. Then it's off to Fry's to buy another drive to replace the dead one.

I didn't have the hour to spare, but I surely don't have the data to spare.

( Do you want to date my avatar? )

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

---Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918), Canadian Army

These guys served?

The first episode of Sesame Street was aired on TV (1969)

ON DINING ALONE

Solitary dinners, I think, ought to be avoided as much as possible, because solitude tends to produce thought, and thought tends to the suspension of the digestive powers. When, however, dining alone is necessary, the mind should be disposed to cheerfulness by a previous interval of relaxation from whatever has seriously occupied the attention, and by directing it to some agreeable object.

---Thomas Walker, c.1835


There is no right to strike against the public safety of anybody, anywhere, any time.
Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)

Twenty-two-year-old Garry Kasparov became the youngest world chess champion after defeating Anatoly Karpov (1985)

WATER IN IDIOM

A flawed plan will hold no water; a plan that is exposed might be dead in the water, or risks being blown out of the water; whereas a plan that will stand close scrutiny is watertight--unless someone pours cold water over it. (And even if they do, it might just be water off a duck's back.) To carry water to the river is like taking coals to Newcastle, and while you can lead a horse to water, you can't make it drink. If you have muddied the water, you might seek to pour oil over troubled waters; a true friend will seek always to be a bridge over troubled water. If you fail to keep your head above water, you may find yourself in hot water or deep water (not forgetting, of course, that still waters run deep). You may not take to a backwater like a duck to water--indeed, you may feel like a fish out of water. However, since much water will haveflowed under the bridge, it is advisable simply to tread water and avoid the temptation to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Remember always that blood is thicker than water, come hell or high water.


HOTCHI WITCHU--gypsy term for hedgehog
"James swerved to avoid running over the hotchi witchu."

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

Whatever you call the day, it's dedicated to the appreciation of those who have defended our land, our people, and our freedom.

To all of you, past, present, and future: Thank you. Thank you for giving of yourselves -- of your talents, your passion, your blood, your lives. And please do not take it as a slight when I say: Someday I hope your jobs become unnecessary.

Peace.