Internet Comedy That Doesn’t Suck?
Every time I try to write about Loading Ready Run, I end up with a dry essay. Which is the antithesis of Loading Ready Run. LRR is an online comedy team. Which immediately conjures up images of college-age guys making cheap videos and desperately trying to be funny; folks who see Saturday Night Live and […]
How to Critique Fiction
I’m just back from writer’s group, in which I received critiques on a fantasy short story of mine. Scott, the critiquer, always gives great critiques. Here’s why: He’s detailed. As he writes, if anything strikes him as strange, out-of-place, or awkward, he immediately notes it in the margins. This is incredibly valuable, as I try […]
Voicemails
After listening to too many bad voicemails recently, here are a few suggestions when leaving a voicemail: Start with both names, yours and that of the person you’re calling. How many times have you got a voicemail saying, “Hi, just letting you know everything’s okay. Call me, okay?” Who is it? You have to infer […]
The Seven Swords
Tsui Hark (Once Upon a Time in China, A Chinese Ghost Story) recently directed the martial arts epic The Seven Swords. It’s beautiful. It’s well-acted. It’s completely incomprehensible. The basic story is pretty straightforward—the emperor has outlawed martial arts, and a small evil army roams the countryside, slaughtering all those that practice martial arts. Someone […]
Freedom for Your Online Life
I’ve been working on a project called Your Online Life for a couple of months now. It’s a “web guide for the rest of us;” an explanation of current web tech and trends. It’s meant to describe the latest websites and services, how to use them and why you’d want to. My original plan was […]
Fixing MySQL in MacOS X 10.5, Leopard
Techie note: For the past couple days, I’ve been struggling to get MySQL to run in Mac OS X 10.5. It would hang whenever I tried to start it. I finally put this updated preference pane file in ~/Library/PreferencePanes, then went in to System Preferences > MySQL and was able to start MySQL from there. […]
Four Tips for Reading Many Input Streams and Maintaining your Sanity
I keep up with a lot of different streams of input: emails, blogs, comics, Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook, and IM. I have much to learn, but here’s what I have learned: Skim. Don’t worry about catching every bit of every email. Start by skimming, then pay closer attention if the content rewards it. Keep up. If […]
A P1k3 Through My Heart
Brennen the content and duration of any moment is no more constrained and regular than that of a street corner or an open door. I’m re-reading Brennen’s chapbook, unrequited poetry. Above is a quote, rather obviously. Every time I do this, I’m reminded of why I love poetry, and why Brennen’s such a great poet. […]
Charging up Napoleon Hill
I’ve heard positive things about Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, so I grabbed the free sample for my Kindle, and have been reading it over the past few days. It’s the Law of Attraction, but presented in the way that I’ve found true: that which you focus on, and consistently strive for, will come […]
The Critical Path
I recently finished reading Buckminster Fuller’s The Critical Path. If you don’t know him, Buckminster invented the geodesic dome, and is generally considered a slightly crackpot visionary designer. The Critical Path is one of his final books, in which he traces an overview of his life and mission. In his early 30’s, he decided to […]