http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/26/musical-synchronicity-of-a-certain-miserable-sort/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18704

It may just be me, but I think the lead characters of these respective and currently popular songs deserve each other. Listening to the lyrics will help to explain why.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/26/dont-go-into-the-basement/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18701

If you’re a vegetarian, that is, because the standing freezer down there is now full with roughly 250 pounds of beef. Krissy went in with a co-worker on half of a locally bred and butchered steer, and her quarter of a steer is now taking up several shelves in the freezer. Athena, who is our resident vegetarian, registers her (entirely posed) horror.

Actually, this is a fine moment to note that Athena recently passed her one year anniversary of being a vegetarian a few weeks ago. She started doing it to see what she thought of it and has kept at it ever since, with all of us doing a bit of research to make sure she’s getting all the nutrients she needs and so on. It does take some effort to keep a vegetarian lifestyle around here — Athena is one of the very few in her school who does — so I’m pretty proud of her for making the choice and sticking with it.

Massive purchase of beef notwithstanding, we’ve all cut down our consumption of meat here at the Scalzi Compound (the massive purchase will last us quite a long time), and Athena’s commitment to not eating the stuff is the major reason why. So good on my kid.

Yesterday was even more entertaining that Thursday. I cracked my happy ass out of bed extremely late by my own standards, hit the health club for some time on the stationary bike, then caught breakfast in the Green Room. After some bloggery and email time and whatnot, I had my massage — And how cool is it that World Steam Expo has a masseur on retainer for the pros!? — and then went exploring. This eventually involved use of the hot tub, among other things.

I spent a decent chunk of the day hanging out with the inestimable Howard Tayler, who created a truly impressive steampunk caricature of me. (When I get home, I shall scan and post this, but at the moment it is my badge art.) Howard is his own self hanging out in the Aegis room, which is basically a camp for combat geeks. Inside the Con hotel, these cats have a rappelling tower, weapons training with actual pointy objects, a bunch of Nerf weapons, and a Victorian encampment. They are pretty much a real life incarnation of the Black Briar group in J.A. Pitt's Black Blade Blues [ Powells | BN ]. The Aegis group helped me make a notable entrance to opening ceremonies.

Also spent a lot more time partying with The League of S.T.E.A.M. and a whole bunch of other folks, including briefly running across the few people besides Howard that I actually knew before I turned up here. Specifically, Gail Carriger, G.D. Falksen (who has an important planet named after him in the Sunspin universe) and Evelyn Kriete (who is responsible for me being invited to this convention). I caught the last part of the The Men That Will Not be Blamed for Nothing concert.

I even got a bit more work done on Going to Extremes.

Today I have lunch with Howard, a High Tea to host, and a plan to hear some more excellent performances. A bit more programming tomorrow.

Interestingly, I am way off my normal schedule here, even my normal convention schedule. I'm not sure what clock I'm living on, but it's neither Jay time nor Con time. I'm just going with the flow. Which it turns out is remarkably difficult for me to do. I feel twitchy about not being up at 5 am exercising (hard to do when you're going to bed at 2 am) and why I'm not writing more.

But I'm here to have fun, which I am decidedly doing; and to see and be seen, which I am decidedly doing.

Is this what time off feels like?

Your Saturday moment of zen.



Playground equipment, 2006. © 2006, 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

The current photo series is from my 'favorites' file, hence the dates jumping about



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Book Review: Grants Pass, edited by Jennifer Brozek and Amanda Pillar — A review that includes an interesting comment on my story "Black Heart, White Mourning".

The Nebula Awards 2012: A Look Back And A Look Forward — James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel in HuffPo.

Calvin and Hobbes on unfettered creativity as a writer — Hahaha.

War of the Worlds: The True Story — A new indie flick coming out that looks pretty cool.

Star Wars Turns 35: How Time Covered the Film Phenomenon

Red Planet Becomes Blue In New Mars Image

Astronauts enter world’s first private supply ship

Impacts Spreading Life through the Cosmos?

Colonel Sanders resembles Confucius — Chicken, anyone?

?otd: Charles Darwin: Man or monkey?

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5/26/2012
Writing time yesterday: 0.5 hours (Going to Extremes proposal)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.0 (solid)
Weight: n/a
Currently reading: Shattering the Ley by Benjamin Tate; Of Blood and Honey by Stina Leicht

Minnesotans are nice; they're also a small and homogenous group. There are 5 million nice people in California, too, but they're surrounded by 32 million rude people. If you turned Minnesota into a giant salt shaker and sprinkled its citizens all over France, you'd get California.

--Mike Wolffe in the Strib.

Today is my grandma's 80th birthday. We're having a big party for her on Sunday--where by "we" I actually mean my folks are doing all the work--but today is the official date. I don't mostly put birthdays on here because I don't want it to seem like a statement if I miss one. But 80, 80 is a big, round number. Eighty is a thing.

Grandma is my last grandparent standing. I mean, I have Grandpa Lyzenga, but I married into him when I was full grown rather than having memories of walking with him when I was tiny; and as much as I will sometimes introduce Aunt Ellen and Uncle Phil as my Lingen grandparents, and as much as they are doing their darnedest, they are in fact a really really special great-aunt and -uncle, which is its own thing and not to be denigrated.

But Grandma has enough personality for four grandparents all by herself. (So, I know firsthand or hear quite vividly, did each of my other grandparents in their own ways. Lack of personality: not an issue in this family.) Grandma is an Energizer bunny. I wrote in her birthday card that she embodies the adage about blooming where one is planted, and I really think that's true. She does well with new people and new situations. She just dusts herself off and tries again, whatever she needs to try again, and I have never once heard of a situation she couldn't eventually make that work in. Never once. Her persistence inspires me. I hope it lasts long past 80.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/25/galaxy-tab-2-7-0-notes/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18694

You’ll recall that when I lost my Mac and bought the emergency netbook, I also picked up a Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 inch tablet, on the rationale that, damn it, I was grumpy and I wanted a toy. This is not an excellent reason to buy a piece of electronic equipment, I am the first to note. That said, I’d had my eye on this particular tablet for a bit, so it wasn’t entirely impulsive. I’ve lived with it now for a week and I’m ready to mention what I like and don’t like about it.

First, a general note: I like it. We have an iPad here in the Scalzi household (it’s primarily Krissy’s) and while it’s surely a nice piece of equipment, I’m not in love with its size. A ten-inch tablet is too large for my tastes; unless you’re Shaquille O’Neal, it’s not something you can carry around or use in a single hand, and in other respects it’s also unwieldy. I understand the boffins at Apple have decreed that the iPad is the perfect size for a tablet and that if we have a problem with that there’s something wrong with us, not them. But screw them, they’re just wrong. In my case, a 7-inch tablet is just about perfectly sized: Large enough to give you enough space to see a lot of things, but small enough to operate with one hand. It’s paperback book-sized, basically, and there’s a reason paperbacks are the size they are: Because they make ergonomic sense for humans.

I am using my tablet primarily as a reading appliance, and to that respect it’s been pretty great. Both the Kindle and Nook apps look good and perform well on it, and the screen is a high enough resolution (1024×600) that I can read books without eyestrain (and, because its an LCD screen, I can read it without a nightlight). I’m also trying the Next Issue app, which works like a Netflix for magazines, and it’s for me at least a nice way to cruise through various magazines without them cluttering up my house.

Web browsing is fine — text is small in portrait mode (one needs to pinch zoom) and perfectly readable in landscape. One thing I do like that is that things don’t automatically default to mobile versions of Web sites. I also like that I can access my own site’s backend via the browser, so I can go in and moderate comments more completely than I can do on my phone. The Android 4.0 system means all the Google toys work in a fairly optimized manner, which is especially useful with GMail, which I use. The keyboard in portrait mode is easy to operate with two thumbs.

Although I don’t use it much for video, it handles video just fine; I ran a bit of Serenity on it via Netflix and didn’t have any problems. Haven’t played any games on it so far, but that’s not why I got it, so even if it were to choke on that I wouldn’t care much. The camera is definitely meh, but it’s another function that I did not buy the tablet for, so that’s fine.

Things not to like: It only comes with 8GB of resident memory and half of that’s devoted to apps that I didn’t pick and probably won’t use but come with the thing anyway. This is mitigated by the MicroSD slot and the fact that I just got a 32GB card in that format for $20 (and that it comes with a deal with Dropbox for something like 50GB of space for a year, which does not suck). The power button and the volume rocker button are close enough to each other that I’m always pressing the wrong button. This is annoying. The screen is occasionally less than perfect with touch response (particularly with small type websites), and gets smeary real fast. It’s slightly weird to think the 4.5-inch screen on my phone has a higher resolution than this 7-inch screen.

However, to be blunt, these criticisms for me are blunted by the fact that a) I paid $240 bucks for the thing, which is not a lot, all things considered, b) the tablets closest to it in capability/design — the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire — have similar or lesser specs and are crimped by design in order to keep you in their respective ecosystems. With regards to a), I was not expecting genuinely top-flight specs for what I paid, and what I got for the price is more than satisfactory. With regards to b), why pay for crimped tools when you can get them uncrimped for essentially the same price?

So, for the price and for what I use the thing for, the Galaxy Tab 2 pretty much hits my needs dead on. If you’re looking for a solid, basic tablet in a smaller form factor and for not a whole lot of cash (relatively speaking), it’s worth giving a look.

We just watched the latest (I think) episode of Legend of Korra, “The Aftermath.” I’m continuing to really enjoy this show for a number of reasons.

MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD

Pacing: One of the things that bugged me was the love triangle between Korra, Mako, and Asami. It felt, not necessarily cliche, but easy. It’s an oft-repeated trope, one that could push characters into more cardboard, stereotypical roles and — if other shows are any example — drag out for far too long.

Instead, Asami’s character quickly developed more depth and conflict. The plot moved along, changing her role in the story. The conflict between Korra and Asami progressed through conflict into understanding and sympathy. I loved the quiet moment at the end where Korra tells Mako, “She’s going to need you.”

I’ve seen that pacing elsewhere, and I appreciate that the show doesn’t seem to get bogged down. There’s always a sense of movement.

Lin Beifong continues to be awesome. In many ways, I think she’s my favorite character. Partly because she’s an older woman kicking all sorts of ass. Partly because she, more than anyone else I’ve seen, seems to take full advantage of her bending abilities. The firebenders throw fire. Earthbenders throw rocks. Beifong, on the other hand, manipulates metal cables like Spider-Man, grows blades from her armor to punch through mechs, and seems to push the “What else can I do with this?” angle.

Complexity: The scene with Tahno’s character really jumped out at me. This is a character who’s introduced as a full-on asshole. He’s arrogant, he cheats, and you really wanted Korra to kick his butt in the tournament. Instead, the White Falls Wolfbats won … and thus became the targets of an Equalist attack.

In the next episode, you see Tahno without his powers, and he’s utterly broken. Korra feels for him. She knows what he lost and how close she came to losing her own bending. It was a fairly short scene, but that’s all it took.

The relationship between Tenzin and Lin Beifong is another interesting example. Their history, the contrast of their apparent discomfort with how well they work together in a crisis … I have no idea where that’s going, but I like the dynamic, and at this point I’m trusting the show not to go somewhere overly cliche with it.

While there are certainly characters who seem flat-out Evil, at least at first, I appreciate that things generally aren’t presented in a simplistic black-and-white way. Neither people nor power are simple, and this show respects that fact.

The Animation: This is a very pretty show, particularly in the way it portrays movement and the grace of the different benders. I get done watching, and other cartoons suddenly seem clunkier.

Trusting the Viewers: I was trying to figure out how to phrase this last bit, and “trust” is the closest I can come. I’ve never seen a single episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but it hasn’t stopped me from enjoying Korra. It doesn’t surprise me that they wanted a show that could welcome new viewers as well as old, but it struck me that there just isn’t a lot of exposition or hand-holding, period. There’s no talking down, no assuming that things will be too complicated or difficult to understand. Elements are explained as they become relevant to the story.

I know there are things I’m missing from Avatar, but I can catch up on my own, and I like that they don’t slow down the story to spoon-feed information.

In Conclusion: Okay, I get it. I’m officially a fan, and I have added Avatar: TLA to my list of things to catch up on (when I find the time).

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Yesterday waa a fine day. I got up too early, to be driven to the airport by lillypond, a/k/a my sister. The flights to Detroit were uneventful, other than being about 40 minutes late getting into DTW. I was able to start digging in to revising the Going to Extremes outline on the plane, plus answering a ton of email. Also had several pleasant conversations with various fellow travelers.

Arriving at World Steam Expo was an interesting experience. It's been years since I walked into a Con cold, not knowing anyone or anything. (I think I know maybe two or three people here.) So once I got settled, I hung out in the lobby and talked to various folks. Eventually I fell in with low persons (a/k/a The League of S.T.E.A.M.), who led me into bad ways (a/k/a Abney Park). Strong drink was consumed, and gutter language was used. A few regrettable incidents may have occurred. I went to bed highly entertained around 2 am, which is the latest I've stayed up in forever.

Plus as a special bonus, I ran into @howardtayler, who in addition to being a brilliant cartoonist and storyteller, is also well on his way to becoming one of my favorite people anywhere, ever.

My schedule today consists of a massage. Oh, how shall I cram it all in?

See some, all or none of you around this joint.