Category: Pulverbatch

January 11, 2004 /

I took a couple chunks of my last vacation days to continue work on the Wall of Glory project, now significantly bigger than that picture shows–it covers a lot of the east side of my room, and has extended onto the door. The numbers so far are twenty-five Penny Arcades, eighteen Checkerboard Nightmares, thirteen AZWPs, three of my own comics, one each from Random Frog Children and Skinny Pandas, and four Grimbleses (you may remember the Grimbles as the only comic that updates as slowly as I do). Oh, and of course the Ninja Assassin Algorithm, which I can’t reprint for fear of its falling into Russian hands.

It’s a pretty great freaking wall. I’d like to make a project of papering my entire room with my favorite comic strips, but it’s going to be hard enough as it is to take these down if I don’t live here in seven months. Plus, eh, I’m kinda tired now.

January 7, 2004 /

I’d read on Neil Gaiman’s blog some time ago that, in a press conference, Margaret Atwood had declared that Oryx and Crake was not speculative fiction, as everything in it was extrapolated from some current trend. Both Mr. Gaiman and myself thought that was a fairly strange statement to make, and I was a little disturbed to hear it from a writer I like so much, but it turns out that she does say it’s speculative fiction after all. So much for gossip.

This is pretty much a post just to reassure myself, actually. Sorry.

Last spring, I read Atwood’s Negotiating with the Dead, a series of transcribed lectures about writing. The themes of that book formed a large part of my senior statement, and had probably as much influence on the way I write structurally as her style has had on my actual prose. Which is to say a lot.

I often have difficulty liking things–books, music, visual art–without somebody else’s trusted opinion to back me up and give it cred. I don’t particularly like this about myself, but it has saved me from some embarrassing devotions (let’s remember that I was big into the Gin Blossoms). There are a few things, though, that I feel I came by honestly. Semisonic is one, Checkerboard Nightmare another, and Atwood is a third: the three of them form a rough but fairly clear portrait of my taste in nearly everything written.

More on writing, in probably a couple of days. (Oh, and thanks to Sumana for the O&C link.)

January 2, 2004 /

As today’s Stone Soup points out, it’s actually pretty silly to even think about working today, but for some reason I did, and dragged myself out of bed at 6:30 just as normal. It was a little strange to be one of like four (as opposed to eighty) people waiting for an elevator, and a little stranger when all the lights on our part of the floor were deliberately off. When I read that comic strip and waited an hour and still only tech support was there, I took off like one of the wiser characters in a survival horror movie.

After that I mostly… slept? And played Double Dash. Maria got a GameCube for Christmas, so unless she bans me from using it I’ll probably never accomplish anything worthwhile again. We actually unlocked almost everything on New Year’s Eve, along with our stay-in-and-snack companion Lisa, but we lacked a memory card at that point and were bereft of saving ability. I got one of those on the aforementioned trip home from work today, so now we get to do it all again. This is a fine and noble thing.

Tonight it’s out to dinner at some fancy place where they make you eat so slowly that it takes two hours to finish the soup, then Strizzle Lizzle rehizzle, and finally sometime after midnight Ian and I will drive to the hinterlands and crash (as in sleep, not… hit things). The next morning, we and forty of our closest relatives will race tiny cars down a track for eight hours until one emerges supreme. Seriously. We’ve been doing it every year since before I was born.

December 29, 2003 /

Tonight, trying to get to rehearsal, in the dark and the cold and the rain, I walked from Bearno’s to Bellarmine. The other side of Bellarmine.

Anyway, if you understand what that means and you’ve got a minute, I could use some chicken soup.

December 29, 2003 /

Of all the songs I was grateful I’d never have to hear again… “Butterfly Kisses” just came on the radio in the cube next to mine. Heeeaaaiiiahghhh. Quickly, to the headphones!

December 26, 2003 /

Oh! People have been posting comments on my LJ feed! I really had no idea, although I’d known it was possible. I guess I’ll have to look at that more often.

The new (well, most recent) version of NewsBruiser has native comment capability, actually, but even when I do get around to upgrading I don’t think I’ll turn it on. It just doesn’t appeal to me. I do like this system, though: anybody who wants can comment, so it’s fun, but they don’t show up on the main page and they disappear twenty-five entries later. Comments are pretty ephemeral in nature–I think Frank Lloyd Wright would approve.

My GPA

December 24, 2003 /

3.3333! That’s an exclamation mark, not a factorial sign. Just for accuracy’s sake. I don’t really know how many threes there are supposed to be; that number just looked right.

December 17, 2003 /

As Sumana inadvertently pointed out to me the other day, because I run NewsBruiser, my use of the verb “to blog” to mean “to publish in my interweb journal” is actually deprecated. “To bruise” is just more specific, not to mention way more not-bleeding-yet-edge. I need to start using that instead.

Tangentially, how far do you think the logical extension of “cutting edge”-style slang can actually go? “Virgin material, untouched by an edge?” “Substance unaware of the edge’s existence?” “Prehistoric stuff existing in a world where edges have not yet been invented?” It kind of loops eventually, I guess. “So far beyond the cutting edge that it’s actually on the other edge, the one not doing the cutting.” I wonder what Anthony Burgess would say.

We’re going to Kenmore Square

December 16, 2003 /

LiveJournal has gotten rid of their invite code system. What does that mean? It means my few remaining holdout friends (or those friends who initially gave in but quickly regressed) without blogs need to get one. Right now.

I know LJ carries a sort of stigma–just as Geocities is the source and font of crappy web pages about one’s cat, LJ is the source and font of angsty emo drama. And bad spelling. And typing in all lower case.

But let’s face it: as far as free solutions go, it’s the best all-in-one publishing / aggregation tool out there. Of course NewsBruiser is better blogging software, and of course Feed on Feeds is a better RSS reader. But they need server space to run on, and many people just don’t have that, or don’t want to pay for it. LJ provides that free space, along with grained access control, easy (but deep) configuration, and good documentation. Plus it’s open-source.

It’d be easy to go over there and snap up a bunch of free journals to compartmentalize things, but of course I don’t need to do that–I can create more NewsBruiser notebooks any time I want, and I’ve always got Zomziepie, Spam As Folk Art and Ruse You Can Bruise to write in.

What I did do, though, is create a new community. Hey, road trip people! I know almost all of you already have LJs, and if you don’t, there’s no reason not to get one now. And then when you do, it is hereby required that you roll on up and post at Calicomicon!

Well huh

December 15, 2003 /

All three of my entries today have had the word “interesting” in their first sentences, so if I write anything else tonight, I have to oh wait.