posted from my nexus one ... hopefully.
Posts published by “centaur”
"Thank you, Carl Sagan" is an in-joke I and my friends use which requires a bit of explanation. I've been a member, on and off, of the Planetary Society since ... oh, heck, I don't know, since I lived in Greenville, South Carolina ... which makes it at least 25 years, a credible guess since the Planetary Society was founded by Carl Sagan in 1980.
Back in the 80's, I was first coming into my own as a space enthusiast - getting a subscription to Scientific American, joining the Science Fiction Book Club, and of course joining the Planetary Society.
A few years after I joined, I opened my mailbox in Greenville and found a renewal letter for the Planetary Society. That was great - I had planned to renew - but when I pulled out the envelope and prepared to write my check, I found the following (roughly reconstructed from memory):
I was flabbergasted. This was my first barely-adult encounter with marketing speak and I couldn't imagine the hubris of someone asking me for money writing the response letter in such a way that it looked like I was thanking them.
Even though I was young and naive, on some level I knew Carl Sagan hadn't written that letter, and even if he had seen it he would have approved it without a second thought (I mean, come on, the Society IS providing a valuable service). But it was funny enough at the time to show it to all of my friends, most of whom were also big fans of Cosmos.
So every time Carl Sagan's name was mentioned, it was immediately followed by a chorus of: "Thank You, Carl Sagan!" I still hear those words every time I hear his name ... but the meaning has changed:
Thank you, Carl Sagan, indeed...
-the Centaur
Back in the 80's, I was first coming into my own as a space enthusiast - getting a subscription to Scientific American, joining the Science Fiction Book Club, and of course joining the Planetary Society.
A few years after I joined, I opened my mailbox in Greenville and found a renewal letter for the Planetary Society. That was great - I had planned to renew - but when I pulled out the envelope and prepared to write my check, I found the following (roughly reconstructed from memory):
Thank you, Carl Sagan for the opportunity to renew my subscription at the Planetary Society! Yes, I'd like to sign up for another year of the Planetary Report and to contribute to all the Planetary Society's great causes!
I was flabbergasted. This was my first barely-adult encounter with marketing speak and I couldn't imagine the hubris of someone asking me for money writing the response letter in such a way that it looked like I was thanking them.
Even though I was young and naive, on some level I knew Carl Sagan hadn't written that letter, and even if he had seen it he would have approved it without a second thought (I mean, come on, the Society IS providing a valuable service). But it was funny enough at the time to show it to all of my friends, most of whom were also big fans of Cosmos.
So every time Carl Sagan's name was mentioned, it was immediately followed by a chorus of: "Thank You, Carl Sagan!" I still hear those words every time I hear his name ... but the meaning has changed:
Cosmos. Contact. Intelligent Life In the Universe (with Shklovskii). The Pioneer Plaque. The Pale Blue Dot. The Planetary Society itself. And A Still More Glorious Dawn Awaits (with Stephen Hawking and Colorpulse).
Thank you, Carl Sagan, indeed...
-the Centaur
For those that don't get it, recursion in computer science refers to a process or definition that refers back to itself. For example, you could imagine "searching for your keys" in terms of searching everywhere in your house for your keys, which involves finding each room and searching everywhere in each room for your keys, which involves going into each room and looking for all the drawers and hiding places and looking everywhere in them for your keys ... and so on, until there's no smaller place to search.
So searching for [recursion] on Google involves Google suggesting that you look for [recursion]. Neat! And I'm pretty sure this is an Easter Egg and not just a bug ... it's persisted for a long time and is geeky enough for the company that encourages you to "Feel Lucky"!
-the Centaur
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M]
Carl Sagan ruminates on life on Earth, how, as seen by a far-off camera on a spacecraft, a pale blue dot houses everyone anyone ever has known in the course of human history.
From his speech on the Pale Blue Dot:
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Thanks, Carl.
-the Centaur
... otherwise known as an ID10t error in the operator component.
Trying to install a new device, wasn't working, and the reason was I never applied the firmware upgrade that the instructions clearly said had to be required. Anthony's nth (7th?) law:
-the Centaur
Trying to install a new device, wasn't working, and the reason was I never applied the firmware upgrade that the instructions clearly said had to be required. Anthony's nth (7th?) law:
If you don't follow all of the instructions, you won't finish in the goal state.(*)(*) Except through dumb luck, or just possibly deep knowledge. Did I have deep knowledge in this case? No. So if you're doing voodoo, try, perhaps, following the complete recipe before you complain your zombie isn't coming back to life as advertised.
-the Centaur
Mild shaking in the house, like it was shoved sideways half an inch and sprung back. Apparently that's this one:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/nc71336726.php
Only my second quake in my 4 years in California. SO far, SO good...
-the Centaur
UPDATE: Sandi felt a quake earlier last year while I was at work. I believe it was this one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/30/san-jose-earthquake-43-ma_n_180814.html
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/nc71336726.php
Only my second quake in my 4 years in California. SO far, SO good...
-the Centaur
UPDATE: Sandi felt a quake earlier last year while I was at work. I believe it was this one:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/30/san-jose-earthquake-43-ma_n_180814.html
PS: For those not in the know, EOM stands for "End of Message" - generally used for a subject-only email without a body, like sending someone an url:
Here's the presentation: http://short/url EOMTechnically I guess that means the EOM in the header is not an EOM, and also by corollary the PS is not a PostScript since it introduces the body of the message.
Well, then, in that case: Hello, Internets!
So, last year I had an extraordinarily complicated series of New Year's Resolutions which almost completely failed. Looking back, I succeeded at my major goals for the year, but the complex plan of weekly / monthly things completely failed.
So, here's a simpler set of New Year's resolutions, goals, what have you:
In other news, Warren Ellis has already blogged 365 times since January 1st. Damn him.
-the Centaur
So, here's a simpler set of New Year's resolutions, goals, what have you:
- Establish a weekly pattern of exercise, including some karate
- Set aside some time each month to do art in addition to writing
- Post to this blog on the average once a day, measured each week
In other news, Warren Ellis has already blogged 365 times since January 1st. Damn him.
-the Centaur
From Wikipedia:
For more information:
Common symptoms are cough, sore throat, runny nose, nasal congestion, and sneezing; sometimes accompanied by 'pink eye', muscle aches, fatigue, malaise, headaches, muscle weakness, uncontrollable shivering, loss of appetite, and rarely extreme exhaustion. Fever is more commonly a symptom of influenza ... The symptoms of a cold usually resolve after about one week; however, it is not rare that symptoms last up to three weeks.Aw, $@%#!!!, I'm in the "not rare" it-sucks-for-a-long-time category.
For more information:
- Mayo Clinic's Flu Diagnoser (I have a cold, not the flu)
- Children's Hospital Flu vs Cold Chart (Again, looks like I have a cold)
- H1N1 vs Cold vs Flu (Again, looks like a cold).
 | Once again, I have completed National Novel Writing Month! This year's entry is the third in the Dakota Frost series, Liquid Fire. I'll have more to say about this later this week, especially the mad scramble to write 38,000 words in 10 days (oy). But until then, let me leave you with the synopsis of Liquid Fire: "Dakota Frost, a magical tattoo artist who can bring tattoos to life, is caught in a war between rival fire magicians over liquid fire - dragon's blood. An ancient order of pyromancers needs it to survive; modern fireweavers need it to perform their magic --- and Dakota Frost is the only person to have summoned a dragon in two hundred years." |
Oh, heck, I'll throw in a repost of the first chapter too ... as edited:
“What is life? No scientist can tell you. Oh, the pocket-protector variety will say that living things move, eat and grow, wrapped up in ten-dollar words like ‘locomotion’ and ‘intake’ and ‘self-organization’. But these by themselves are not life: a waterfall moves more vibrantly than any animal, a fire eats more efficiently, a crystal is more organized.
“A worldly scientist, aware of the dance of the sexes, will mention the heat of metabolism, the fire of reproduction. But a fire eats to live just like we do, but faster: and where we breed in a slow dance of desire, a fire lives in a hot orgy of giving, casting off its own substance, flying sparks, glowing seeds, drifting through the air to start the cycle again. If metabolizing and reproducing were all there were to life, would not fire be alive?
“But life is not any one of these things: life is all of them together. It is the combination of moving and eating and organizing, of metabolism and reproduction, of a thousand things more. Put them all together, and you get more than you started with: a holistic—holy—combination that is more than the sum of its parts. Life is magic.
“Or more precisely, magic is life,” I said. Nowhere was this more clear than with my traveling companions, werekin and vampires whose very biology was woven with magic; but since they would not approve of outed just so I could make a point, I instead picked on myself. “I know this, because I’m a skindancer. I ink magic tattoos that only work because their magical lines are laid on a living canvas that powers them. Each tattoo is like a circuit, that captures the intent of the wearer and projects it out it into the world. But it is the flow of the blood beneath the flex of the skin that powers them: without that life, they’d be useless.”
I don’t know what got me on that dissertation, but when I was done, the airline stranger in the seat to my left—a cute granola girl, curvy almost to the point of chubby, with a refreshing patchouli scent and dirty blond hair so curly it looked like coils of copper wire, I mean, really, just my type, down to the nose ring—put her magazine down and looked at me quizzically.
“Lady, are you for real?” she asked.
Ten days off to write! No trips, no vacations, no distractions. Just me and writing ... but: The "Terminator" version of the common cold. Car repairing turned car totaling and car shopping during hard raining. Cat fights and cat urine. And a desperate scramble to catch up in National Novel Writing Month turning what I love ... writing ... into a chore.
And then my wife came back Saturday night.
That was great, but things didn't get better right away. See #3 above, cat urine: our incompletely housetrained Gabby the Cat decided to urinate on a big soft squishy pillow to either
Stepping through the door was ... an unpleasant moment.
But we persevered. We went out for a late dinner and talked about ... hell, everything. We crashed early, I got up at the ass-crack of dawn, fed the cats, went to church, put everything in the hands of God, and went back and slept till noon. By the time we awoke, it was clear that the pillow was the source of the smell and the tarps-plus-blankets wash-immediately-if-soiled solution was working to protect our home as we transition street cat to house-and-yard cat. We had a lovely lunch at our favorite restaurant (Aqui) and test-drove a hybrid (a Prius). Everything, once again, became OK, and it seemed like all the nastiness of that awful ten days rattling around the house mostly with myself, a virus and three irritated cats was at last over.
So: yesterday: 2094 words. Today: 2583 words. As of this moment, I am officially caught up on where I "should have been" for Nano, and I'm on track to finish by tomorrow. And we even have a plan to save our obstraperous little cat, who is mellowing out now that he has two people to entertain him (and to separate the cats from each other so they have time to mellow).
Best of all, my best friend is home.
-the Centaur
P.S. Thanks, God.
And then my wife came back Saturday night.
That was great, but things didn't get better right away. See #3 above, cat urine: our incompletely housetrained Gabby the Cat decided to urinate on a big soft squishy pillow to either
- (a) reduce his insecurity by marking his protector's stuff with his scent (the official story as told by everybody's favorite cat books)
- (b) show his irritation at his protector locking him in a room (what I strongly suspect based on my study of animal cognition, which might be summed up as saying "just because they can't talk doesn't mean they're completely unaware idiots")
Stepping through the door was ... an unpleasant moment.
But we persevered. We went out for a late dinner and talked about ... hell, everything. We crashed early, I got up at the ass-crack of dawn, fed the cats, went to church, put everything in the hands of God, and went back and slept till noon. By the time we awoke, it was clear that the pillow was the source of the smell and the tarps-plus-blankets wash-immediately-if-soiled solution was working to protect our home as we transition street cat to house-and-yard cat. We had a lovely lunch at our favorite restaurant (Aqui) and test-drove a hybrid (a Prius). Everything, once again, became OK, and it seemed like all the nastiness of that awful ten days rattling around the house mostly with myself, a virus and three irritated cats was at last over.
So: yesterday: 2094 words. Today: 2583 words. As of this moment, I am officially caught up on where I "should have been" for Nano, and I'm on track to finish by tomorrow. And we even have a plan to save our obstraperous little cat, who is mellowing out now that he has two people to entertain him (and to separate the cats from each other so they have time to mellow).
Best of all, my best friend is home.
-the Centaur
P.S. Thanks, God.
Literally dead on +5,300 words, on schedule for today, only 1,280 behind what I would have done at 1,666 words a day ... and 6,280 words remaining to finish Nano.
Unlikely to hit all those tomorrow - my wife is returning from a business trip and she gets first dibs on the Centaur before he goes back to pulling the Nano wagon. But maybe this weekend.
Unlikely to hit all those tomorrow - my wife is returning from a business trip and she gets first dibs on the Centaur before he goes back to pulling the Nano wagon. But maybe this weekend.
... still on schedule, but still not ahead because I am still sick and crashed out for hours after Thanksgiving brunch (or maybe that was the turkey).
Still, Not good. I'd say it's time to go to the doctor but this on-again-off-again sniffle, cough, randomly crash out for three hours always seems like "it's getting better".
Even though it ruined half of my Thanksgiving day, I went to sleep last night actually thinking my cold was probably about over.
Today: carshopping, housecleaning, and, oh yeah, I need ~3800 words to stay on target, ~6500 to get back to where I should be if I'd been keeping up with 1666 words a day from the beginning, and 11,580 words to finish Nanowrimo completely.
Still, Not good. I'd say it's time to go to the doctor but this on-again-off-again sniffle, cough, randomly crash out for three hours always seems like "it's getting better".
Even though it ruined half of my Thanksgiving day, I went to sleep last night actually thinking my cold was probably about over.
Today: carshopping, housecleaning, and, oh yeah, I need ~3800 words to stay on target, ~6500 to get back to where I should be if I'd been keeping up with 1666 words a day from the beginning, and 11,580 words to finish Nanowrimo completely.
35,078 words, 6,588 behind, 14,922 remaining.
Here's to a productive Turkey Day ... and the slight possibility of actually catching up. It would require 8,000+ words. But, since I'm not doing much for Thanksgiving ... not traveling myself, wife out of town, only have a brunch with friends ... it' s just within the realm of possibility.
Cross your fingers.
30,289 words complete; 19,711 words remaining, 9,711 words behind where I should be: 40,000 words.
Surely I can make that up tomorrow, if not by Thursday.
Time for pound cake. Then bed.
...things progressing nicely. 23,288 words, 26,712 remaining. If I keep up this pace (not altogether likely, in fact, but here's hoping) I will actually finish Nanowrimo early.
... now officially up to a rate which would see me to the finish line, though I still am almost as many words behind (17981) as I have written (18685). And this is with me still being sick. Bleah.
However, the good news is that I fell in love with the book last night. This is something every author needs to do with their novel, at some point, or they're never going to do it the justice it deserves, if they finish it at all. Well, I fell in love with Liquid Fire on the streets of Oakland last night ... at least the streets of Oakland as seen through the eyes of Dakota Frost.
-the Centaur
... still a little slow, but pace picking up. Things progressing. Key discoveries in plot made.
Still, 35,000 words in nine days ... oy. I mean, Ok.
... things are moving again. Cough. Cough. Sigh.
Can I do it? Oh yeah.