Big Ass Year End Review Thing
30/12/10 00:17 Filed in: reading
8. The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Ted Chiang
Probably the best novella...novellette?...short novel...long short story...I’ve read about artificial intelligence. It’s about programing and intellectual development and evolution and love. Real love. Not the idealized movie crap. Well worth it and now, apparently, free to read online.
7. Transition, Iain M. Banks
I’m cheating with this one because I actually read it in December 2009. But damn was it good. Everyone talks about how much of a bad ass sci-fi author Iain M. Banks is, but I didn’t get it. I read a couple of his short stories, and yeah they were good, but not good. I read Consider Phlebas and enjoyed parts, but as a whole I thought it was...well...meh. Then I read Transition and converted. Here’s why: the first line in the first chapter begins, “Apparently I am what is known as an Unreliable Narrator...” How could I not love that? I mean, really? It’s all about personal responsibility, doing the right thing, not being a dick, and hopping through other dimensions by means of really great tantric sex. Okay, that last bit is only a minor portion of the book, but it’s still a fun portion. It also contains one of my favorite lines:“"There is no excuse beyond fatalistic self-indulgence and sheer laziness for doing nothing." If you’ve never read Banks, skip right to this one.
6. The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Everyone raves about this book; most do it better than I do. It deserves it, though, so go read it.
5. Metatropolis, Karle Schroeder, Tobias Buckell, John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, and Jay Lake
Five great authors writing in a shared universe that’s post-apocalyptic and cyberpunk and old west and funny and gritty and the first story in the audio book is read by goddamned Saul Tigh. Totally worth it on every level.
4. Altered Carbon, Richard K. Morgan
Yeah, it’s a little heavy on the MANLINESS factor, but not as much as The Steel Remains (that book practically squirted testosterone all over your face when you read it). And besides, Morgan writes smart enough to actually be commenting on machismo while he writes it (though not as much as in Thirteen). A very solid cyberpunk noir thriller murder mystery. Also, the premise of someone solving a murder in a world where people don’t die (they just download into new bodies) is utterly enrapturing. The world building is great, and the world that’s created extremely solid. HIghly recommend.
3. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
You’re tired of all the geek by now, and you want something calm and literary to round out your end/start of year reading? But at the same time you still want something weird and a little out there? Pick up Cloud Atlas. Written from...counts...six?...points of very in a kind of Matryoshka doll style of nestled stories, this book takes you from 1850 to the far flung future without exploding into a twelve volume set or even really being big enough to use as a door stop or TV stand. One of the best books I’ve read all year.
2. Y: The Last Man Vol. 10: Whys and Wherefores, Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra
(Again, cheating. This is really for the whole series not just the last volume.) I couldn’t go a whole list without including at least one graphic novel. Y is seriously good shit, especially if you like literary book jokes but even if you don’t. Amazing characters. Compelling setting and situation. Mysterious mysteries. Ninjas. Monkeys. Star Wars jokes. It has a little bit of everything for everyone. Read More...
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Writer Tech: iBooks and Kindle
16/12/10 21:07 Filed in: Writing
No, seriously. Remember way back at the beginning of the week when I said research was an integral component to artistic creation? Well, ebooks are a god send when it comes to research. Do you realize what I would have given for an iPad back when I was still in school? At least a kidney. Maybe a lung (but probably not.) I shit you not.
The iBooks and Kindle apps are hot shit when it comes to research material.
Two words: searchable marginalia. That’s right. You can search your margin notes. Hell, you can search phrases you highlighted. OR YOU CAN JUST SEARCH FOR WORDS AND PHRASES. Do you know how much grief that would have saved me back in the hallowed halls of academia? I may be a bibliophile at heart. The sight of a broke spine and a hundred little post it notes sticking up from the edges of a book may make my inner nerd squee with joy and the secret desire to be a wizard studying ancient tomes. BUT THE FACT THAT I CAN SEARCH THE BOOK AT WILL THROWS ME INTO FITS OF CAPSLOCKS!
Plus, I have freed myself of the distinction between “work books” and “fun books.” I’ve never had qualms about highlighting, dogearing, or scribbling all over books I’ve deemed only for research -- i.e. “work books.” But I can’t bring myself to do the same for books I’m reading for my own enjoyment -- “fun books.” With eBooks, though, I don’t care. I’ll highlight the shit out of a good novel just because I like the phrasing or the sentiment or the FUCK YEAH moment. And hey, later...I CAN GO BACK DIRECTLY TO THAT HIGHLIGHT WITHOUT FLIPPING THROUGH PAGE AFTER PAGE AFTER PAGE.
*Ahem*
Life changing.
Two words: searchable marginalia. That’s right. You can search your margin notes. Hell, you can search phrases you highlighted. OR YOU CAN JUST SEARCH FOR WORDS AND PHRASES. Do you know how much grief that would have saved me back in the hallowed halls of academia? I may be a bibliophile at heart. The sight of a broke spine and a hundred little post it notes sticking up from the edges of a book may make my inner nerd squee with joy and the secret desire to be a wizard studying ancient tomes. BUT THE FACT THAT I CAN SEARCH THE BOOK AT WILL THROWS ME INTO FITS OF CAPSLOCKS!
Plus, I have freed myself of the distinction between “work books” and “fun books.” I’ve never had qualms about highlighting, dogearing, or scribbling all over books I’ve deemed only for research -- i.e. “work books.” But I can’t bring myself to do the same for books I’m reading for my own enjoyment -- “fun books.” With eBooks, though, I don’t care. I’ll highlight the shit out of a good novel just because I like the phrasing or the sentiment or the FUCK YEAH moment. And hey, later...I CAN GO BACK DIRECTLY TO THAT HIGHLIGHT WITHOUT FLIPPING THROUGH PAGE AFTER PAGE AFTER PAGE.
*Ahem*
Life changing.
Writer Tech: SlipBox
13/12/10 08:36 Filed in: Writing
Ubiquitous note taking. It’s the only way to make sure you don’t forget that amazing sentence/paragraph/story idea that finds its way into your head while you’re running your errands, staring at the computer screen during your boring day job, sitting on the... you get the idea. No matter how you go about keeping track of those notes, organizing the little slips of paper or palm scribblings can be a challenge. For the longest time, I kept all my random brain droppings in a long text file (synced to my Dropbox for easy, anywhere access), but I had to remember I’d written something in there to find it. That, or read through all of the snippets one at a time (which, okay, yeah I did sometimes.)
Then I found SlipBox.
SlipBox uses tags, word association, and algorithms I don’t really understand to create a “scent” for each note you enter. It then creates association trees based on those scents that let travel from one note to another in a somewhat connected fashion. So, for example, the random phrase about popcorn that popped (haha) into my head last week is connected to the quote about movies I made up three months ago. You can also sort by several other categories as well as do full text searches. Plus, the whole thing has Dropbox synchronization (yay, ubiquitous backup for my ubiquitous notes.)
Side Note: Are you using Dropbox yet? No? What’s wrong with you?
Now, I’m not all love and kittens when it comes to SlipBox. For one, while you can create a local copy of your notes on your iPad, it won’t sync that copy with Dropbox, and it won’t cache your Dropbox file so you can’t use it unless you’ve got an internet connection. No big if you’re using an iPad 3G, but I have a smartphone so why would I need an iPad 3G? Ahem. Along the same lines, there’s no Android version. Yet. That I know of. And while I can’t really fault the app for not being on every single platform I own, its still puts a kink in my note taking. (I should mention that there is a free OSX version of the program, and it’s great for pounding in large amounts.) As such, the iPad app has become more of an organization tool then a front line note taking app.
Still, the fact that, just by browsing through the scents, I was able to create a burgeoning plot line out of random scraps of notes spaced months if not years apart makes it well worth the extra step.
(SlipBox in the App Store)
Side Note: I don’t remember paying $10 for this app. I think it was more around $5. Maybe that was a sale or an introductory price or something. I suggest trying the free version before shelling out for the full version.
SlipBox uses tags, word association, and algorithms I don’t really understand to create a “scent” for each note you enter. It then creates association trees based on those scents that let travel from one note to another in a somewhat connected fashion. So, for example, the random phrase about popcorn that popped (haha) into my head last week is connected to the quote about movies I made up three months ago. You can also sort by several other categories as well as do full text searches. Plus, the whole thing has Dropbox synchronization (yay, ubiquitous backup for my ubiquitous notes.)
Side Note: Are you using Dropbox yet? No? What’s wrong with you?
Now, I’m not all love and kittens when it comes to SlipBox. For one, while you can create a local copy of your notes on your iPad, it won’t sync that copy with Dropbox, and it won’t cache your Dropbox file so you can’t use it unless you’ve got an internet connection. No big if you’re using an iPad 3G, but I have a smartphone so why would I need an iPad 3G? Ahem. Along the same lines, there’s no Android version. Yet. That I know of. And while I can’t really fault the app for not being on every single platform I own, its still puts a kink in my note taking. (I should mention that there is a free OSX version of the program, and it’s great for pounding in large amounts.) As such, the iPad app has become more of an organization tool then a front line note taking app.
Still, the fact that, just by browsing through the scents, I was able to create a burgeoning plot line out of random scraps of notes spaced months if not years apart makes it well worth the extra step.
(SlipBox in the App Store)
Side Note: I don’t remember paying $10 for this app. I think it was more around $5. Maybe that was a sale or an introductory price or something. I suggest trying the free version before shelling out for the full version.
Writer Tech: Muji Note
25/11/10 11:44 Filed in: Writing
General consensus says the iPad is only good for media consumption, not creation. Not so, says I. I says the iPad is an amazing research tool, and anyone who tells you research isn’t a part of creation is lying or a hack. I’ll tell you straight out, I have no plans to write my entire novel on this little slate -- the word processing options on the iPad are tolerable at best, and it’d be hell for longer projects -- but its still going to be an indispensable tool throughout the process.
So, over the course of the next couple days I’ll give a run down of the apps I’m using and how I’m using them.
First up:
Muji Note
New notebooks are my porn. Exciting. Naked. Drool worthy... Er, um, okay this analogy breaks down quickly, becoming creepy and sad at the same time. Ahem. I like notebooks and the blank potential they hold between their covers. While I’ve never owned a physical Muji notebook, I’ve respected their design philosophy, and their iPad app was getting glowing reviews from gadget blogs I respect. (Mainly Giz.) So I went ahead, ponied up the $4 bucks, and downloaded ‘er.
While it doesn’t have the “palm rest” technology that allows you to rest the side of your hand on the screen while you write, it does offer some features other note taking apps lack. Like the ability to zoom in on the page so you don’t have to write letters like a second grader, and the freedom to rearrange page order within notebooks. (I let my mind and my notes wander off on tangents while world building, so I love the ability to rearrange my pages and put them in a semblance of order once I’ve finished.)
I have four notebooks setup at the moment: one for protagonists, antagonists, general cosmology, and city infrastructure, and they’re storing all of my world building and character notes. Sure, I could keep them in a word document, but I prefer to handwrite my initial story notes. And yes, I realize a physical notebook would be cheaper (and more battery efficient,) but you can’t backup a physical notebook or export it to PDFs.
Plus, you can import images from your photo library and attach them to pages, so if you’re a visual person (like me) you can add pictures to the character profiles, maps to the city descriptions, etc. and so on.
Originally, the app had problems with notebooks that had more than four or five pages. By problems I mean it lagged. LAGGED. We’re talking dial-up lag, here. We’re talking your grandmother’s crap-ware ladden five-year-old PC lag, here. Luckily, the latest update fixed this problem and it works like a dream now.
(Muji Note in the App Store)
So, over the course of the next couple days I’ll give a run down of the apps I’m using and how I’m using them.
First up:
New notebooks are my porn. Exciting. Naked. Drool worthy... Er, um, okay this analogy breaks down quickly, becoming creepy and sad at the same time. Ahem. I like notebooks and the blank potential they hold between their covers. While I’ve never owned a physical Muji notebook, I’ve respected their design philosophy, and their iPad app was getting glowing reviews from gadget blogs I respect. (Mainly Giz.) So I went ahead, ponied up the $4 bucks, and downloaded ‘er.
While it doesn’t have the “palm rest” technology that allows you to rest the side of your hand on the screen while you write, it does offer some features other note taking apps lack. Like the ability to zoom in on the page so you don’t have to write letters like a second grader, and the freedom to rearrange page order within notebooks. (I let my mind and my notes wander off on tangents while world building, so I love the ability to rearrange my pages and put them in a semblance of order once I’ve finished.)
I have four notebooks setup at the moment: one for protagonists, antagonists, general cosmology, and city infrastructure, and they’re storing all of my world building and character notes. Sure, I could keep them in a word document, but I prefer to handwrite my initial story notes. And yes, I realize a physical notebook would be cheaper (and more battery efficient,) but you can’t backup a physical notebook or export it to PDFs.
Plus, you can import images from your photo library and attach them to pages, so if you’re a visual person (like me) you can add pictures to the character profiles, maps to the city descriptions, etc. and so on.
Originally, the app had problems with notebooks that had more than four or five pages. By problems I mean it lagged. LAGGED. We’re talking dial-up lag, here. We’re talking your grandmother’s crap-ware ladden five-year-old PC lag, here. Luckily, the latest update fixed this problem and it works like a dream now.
(Muji Note in the App Store)