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My friend and colleague Erik T. Ray, with whom I worked at O'Reilly and co-authored the Perl & XML book, died suddenly at the hospital last night while recovering from a traffic accident. He was a good guy, and showed up on an episode of The Gameshelf. I still have the strange Korean novelty pen he gave me at the studio that day.
(no subject)
Mar. 16th, 2002 10:16 amThis war is so strange. Boy oh boy. Some General Boy on the radio going on about all the hundreds of Al Queda in the mountains we've kill, kill, kill!!ed over the last week. While I appreciate frankness... I dunno. He just seemed to be really into it, is all.
On the other hand, I always say that I enjoy hearing people talk positively about their jobs, so maybe I have a double standard.
(Usually I mean that should I, say, walk into a Cumberland Farms and overhear a trucker talking excitedly to someone about a recent, especially successful run he's made, I get a glow that lasts all day.)
Enough! What's been going on with me? Happy things, mostly.
On Thursday,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cthulhia and I went geocaching, which I hadn't done in a long time. We couldn't find the cache, but I appreciated very much her dragging me out of the house to enjoy the nice day. I decided that I'm not very good at the searching part of geocaching since I get too contemplative, too easily... it's the only time I get out into "nature" and I find it easy to forget I have a goal and just wander, absorbing the surroundings. It's funny that I can only motivate myself to get out there by declaring I have a goal, though! Yes, we all love geocaching.
Afterwards, we went to Rosebuds and ate PIE. Cuz it was PI DAY. I had APPLE PIE. I hadn't been there before, and it worked out well -- even though the place seems packed whenever I walk past it, at 17:30 on a Thursday we were the only diners. Food very good (I was very hungry) but kind of expensive. Waitstaff was goofy. I'll be returning.
Yesterday I officially started turning outline into text, with the nutshell book. This after reading the first couple of chapters of "Windows 98 in a Nutshell", which Chuck gave me to use as a model. It really does strike a balance in its style... call it colorful austerity. Trying to be fun to read and mega-concise simultaneously is quite an interesting challenge.
Much of this weekend, though, I'll spend reading P&X one last time. After Tuesday, we authors can't touch it any further, and in another few weeks it should be on shelves! Wow. Sometime in the near future it will Launch, which means that oreilly.com will start hyping it in earnest, and put up a sample chapter. I have made a hype page of my own as part of my new personal website, and if the launch happens before I'm done with my site makeover (quite likely, given my current task priorities) I'll graft it onto the old site.
On the other hand, I always say that I enjoy hearing people talk positively about their jobs, so maybe I have a double standard.
(Usually I mean that should I, say, walk into a Cumberland Farms and overhear a trucker talking excitedly to someone about a recent, especially successful run he's made, I get a glow that lasts all day.)
Enough! What's been going on with me? Happy things, mostly.
On Thursday,
cthulhia and I went geocaching, which I hadn't done in a long time. We couldn't find the cache, but I appreciated very much her dragging me out of the house to enjoy the nice day. I decided that I'm not very good at the searching part of geocaching since I get too contemplative, too easily... it's the only time I get out into "nature" and I find it easy to forget I have a goal and just wander, absorbing the surroundings. It's funny that I can only motivate myself to get out there by declaring I have a goal, though! Yes, we all love geocaching.Afterwards, we went to Rosebuds and ate PIE. Cuz it was PI DAY. I had APPLE PIE. I hadn't been there before, and it worked out well -- even though the place seems packed whenever I walk past it, at 17:30 on a Thursday we were the only diners. Food very good (I was very hungry) but kind of expensive. Waitstaff was goofy. I'll be returning.
Yesterday I officially started turning outline into text, with the nutshell book. This after reading the first couple of chapters of "Windows 98 in a Nutshell", which Chuck gave me to use as a model. It really does strike a balance in its style... call it colorful austerity. Trying to be fun to read and mega-concise simultaneously is quite an interesting challenge.
Much of this weekend, though, I'll spend reading P&X one last time. After Tuesday, we authors can't touch it any further, and in another few weeks it should be on shelves! Wow. Sometime in the near future it will Launch, which means that oreilly.com will start hyping it in earnest, and put up a sample chapter. I have made a hype page of my own as part of my new personal website, and if the launch happens before I'm done with my site makeover (quite likely, given my current task priorities) I'll graft it onto the old site.
Coming back to life
Mar. 5th, 2002 06:56 pmToday I finished a draft of a column that I last week successfully pitched to an online publication (where I've appeared before) and asked some former cow orkers for a tech review. Got two responses, one helpful, one less so. Put it aside for now.
Fielded an idea from a couple of more recent ex-orkers regarding an online resource for all kinds of legislative tracking. I noted how it rekindled my ideas about a sort of IMDB for Congress, where bills and laws are like film titles and the congresspeople behind them are like the cast and crew, and everything is hyperlinked and automated. That would be kind of cool.
Picked up another Arcus contract. (Or got tossed one, rather.) It's a 20-hour job due in two weeks, but is most notable in that it requires me to get familiar with some software that I wrote two years ago, including a shopping cart Perl module that I was rather proud of at the time, and have since utterly forgotten about. It has lived on, in my wake. Nutty. Also, hmm. Despite Joe's feelings to the contrary, I still can't find anything like it on CPAN. This I will put on my list of things to revive.
Revive? I today found that O'Reilly.com has a link in their catalog page to P&X, so I really have to at least mention it on my own site. Haven't done this yet, but I did get bit by the desire to play with "corndog", my own weblog software. I got it running on my iBook with a little bit of struggle (more the fault of my not-quite-understanding of one aspect of HTML::Mason). It's ready for me to swoop in and add the glossary components that I've been wanting for many many months. That, sadly, may prove to be the end of my regular LJ postings. I think it will be for the best. We'll see what happens.
It's past 7 but I think I'll change my pants and head over to Denis' anyway.
Fielded an idea from a couple of more recent ex-orkers regarding an online resource for all kinds of legislative tracking. I noted how it rekindled my ideas about a sort of IMDB for Congress, where bills and laws are like film titles and the congresspeople behind them are like the cast and crew, and everything is hyperlinked and automated. That would be kind of cool.
Picked up another Arcus contract. (Or got tossed one, rather.) It's a 20-hour job due in two weeks, but is most notable in that it requires me to get familiar with some software that I wrote two years ago, including a shopping cart Perl module that I was rather proud of at the time, and have since utterly forgotten about. It has lived on, in my wake. Nutty. Also, hmm. Despite Joe's feelings to the contrary, I still can't find anything like it on CPAN. This I will put on my list of things to revive.
Revive? I today found that O'Reilly.com has a link in their catalog page to P&X, so I really have to at least mention it on my own site. Haven't done this yet, but I did get bit by the desire to play with "corndog", my own weblog software. I got it running on my iBook with a little bit of struggle (more the fault of my not-quite-understanding of one aspect of HTML::Mason). It's ready for me to swoop in and add the glossary components that I've been wanting for many many months. That, sadly, may prove to be the end of my regular LJ postings. I think it will be for the best. We'll see what happens.
It's past 7 but I think I'll change my pants and head over to Denis' anyway.
Joe called yesterday. I hadn't seen or spoken with him since that poker night, weeks ago, so that was pretty good. Notably, he said I was insane for agreeing to do another book. I'm glad someone finally has. Then again, he said this while in the midst of his own task of rewriting "Unix Power Tools" for the very same patron.
I can pretend to complain about being so enmeshed in the cult of St. Tim, maybe even moreso since moving out of the office (I passed my four-month anniversary a few days ago), but it'd be a flimsy whine. I'm really happy to be where I am. I think.
Anyway, Chuck says all the editors are stonily silent about our outline proposal, so he's inviting me over for contract talk on Monday. Meanwhile, I've started in on the P&X adds & edits. Making a Schematron example now. Schematron is pretty neat. The end.
Should I qualify Snake River Conspiracy as Geek Rock? Probably. The booklet art for "Sonic Jihad" contains Mac OS humor, and the hardcoriest (or at lest pottymouthiest) track, "Vulcan", is filled with Star Trek references. Who knows. I like it, anyway.
I can pretend to complain about being so enmeshed in the cult of St. Tim, maybe even moreso since moving out of the office (I passed my four-month anniversary a few days ago), but it'd be a flimsy whine. I'm really happy to be where I am. I think.
Anyway, Chuck says all the editors are stonily silent about our outline proposal, so he's inviting me over for contract talk on Monday. Meanwhile, I've started in on the P&X adds & edits. Making a Schematron example now. Schematron is pretty neat. The end.
Should I qualify Snake River Conspiracy as Geek Rock? Probably. The booklet art for "Sonic Jihad" contains Mac OS humor, and the hardcoriest (or at lest pottymouthiest) track, "Vulcan", is filled with Star Trek references. Who knows. I like it, anyway.
In the yeeeear 2525
Feb. 20th, 2002 04:24 pmA smart person of whom I think highly just posted a fatalistic message to a mailing list discussion about palindromic timestamps, doubting that humanity will survive to experience 2112. This attitude, epsecially in such a person, I find deepy disappointing.
Sitting in the 1369 now, in the rear corner, very comfortable.
How are the books doing? I'm supposed to be drafting up changes I want to make to the current P&X draft while it's moving through copyedit. I have maybe ten days before Linda starts sending mush-mush email at me, so I'm taking it easy. Maybe too easy. But, yes, I am feeling quite done enough with that book. The only changes I know it needs are code tweaks. (For instance, super-reviewer Mike Stok pointed out to me how nearly all my example programs that take filenames as arguments would choke with files named "0", since they check the command line values for truth, instead of for definition. I'd say something sarcastic about how I must accomodate readers who'd knowingly name a file "0", but I block myself by imagining a half-dozen murky situations where this might happen to a sane person. So be it.)
Meanwhile, Chuck has my revised outline, which I mailed on Saturday. Or so I think. I haven't heard from him since we last met Friday, which is unusual.
It's interesting to compare Linda and Chuck. So far they both seem really laid-back, but Linda prefers to take a hands-off approach with her writers, always available for communication but rarely starting it herself, while Chuck has so far been a lot more proactive with me, forwarding lots of thoughts and ideas my way and scheduling meetings, at least for the first couple of weeks after he first popped the question to me. He has said that he's been increasingly busy very lately, and that's probably the whole reason for his sudden lack of response. It won't hurt to pong a ping his way, though. I really want to get started! (And get a check.)
I've decided to next try wrapping my head around AppleScript Studio, Apple's new suite for developing Cocoa applications in humble AppleScript. I think this would serve as a fine introduction to Cocoa and Aqua programming in general. Mastering this would get me familiar with all of Next/Apple's magic IDE tools and hooks a lot faster than I would coming at it from a purely Objective C angle; AppleScript is a much simpler language, and an interpreted one, meaning less groveling over syntax while I learn. Nice.
While here at the cafe, I opened a packet brother Ricky mailed me, and which I happened to have in my backpack. It conatined some extraordinary things: a short letter from Ricky, a Philip K Dick fanzine from 1989, containing an outline to an unpublished PKD novel, and two cute-yet-austere black-and-white photographs I have never before seen of Baby Prog playing peek-a-boo, one with blanket on head, one with blanket not on head. Ricky has never sent me interesting things before. How random! Belated happy Chaoflux, brother.
Sitting in the 1369 now, in the rear corner, very comfortable.
How are the books doing? I'm supposed to be drafting up changes I want to make to the current P&X draft while it's moving through copyedit. I have maybe ten days before Linda starts sending mush-mush email at me, so I'm taking it easy. Maybe too easy. But, yes, I am feeling quite done enough with that book. The only changes I know it needs are code tweaks. (For instance, super-reviewer Mike Stok pointed out to me how nearly all my example programs that take filenames as arguments would choke with files named "0", since they check the command line values for truth, instead of for definition. I'd say something sarcastic about how I must accomodate readers who'd knowingly name a file "0", but I block myself by imagining a half-dozen murky situations where this might happen to a sane person. So be it.)
Meanwhile, Chuck has my revised outline, which I mailed on Saturday. Or so I think. I haven't heard from him since we last met Friday, which is unusual.
It's interesting to compare Linda and Chuck. So far they both seem really laid-back, but Linda prefers to take a hands-off approach with her writers, always available for communication but rarely starting it herself, while Chuck has so far been a lot more proactive with me, forwarding lots of thoughts and ideas my way and scheduling meetings, at least for the first couple of weeks after he first popped the question to me. He has said that he's been increasingly busy very lately, and that's probably the whole reason for his sudden lack of response. It won't hurt to pong a ping his way, though. I really want to get started! (And get a check.)
I've decided to next try wrapping my head around AppleScript Studio, Apple's new suite for developing Cocoa applications in humble AppleScript. I think this would serve as a fine introduction to Cocoa and Aqua programming in general. Mastering this would get me familiar with all of Next/Apple's magic IDE tools and hooks a lot faster than I would coming at it from a purely Objective C angle; AppleScript is a much simpler language, and an interpreted one, meaning less groveling over syntax while I learn. Nice.
While here at the cafe, I opened a packet brother Ricky mailed me, and which I happened to have in my backpack. It conatined some extraordinary things: a short letter from Ricky, a Philip K Dick fanzine from 1989, containing an outline to an unpublished PKD novel, and two cute-yet-austere black-and-white photographs I have never before seen of Baby Prog playing peek-a-boo, one with blanket on head, one with blanket not on head. Ricky has never sent me interesting things before. How random! Belated happy Chaoflux, brother.
I just mailed Chuck a book proposal that actually looks something like a book proposal, instead of the flimsy thing I sent him last week. So that's good. One thing I realized: this book will have to be written bloody quickly. "Perl & XML" isn't trying to synchronize with any real-world events, but this one wants to be born in time for a big conference in the fall. Cheeses. That'll mean about two chapters every three weeks, and that might even be pushing it.
And yet I continue, though this certainly blows away any other projects I thought I'd like to work on, at least through the summer. I have felt consistently psyched about this project for nearly two weeks now, which is something I couldn't have ever said about the other book. Here, I feel much closer to, and interested by, the topic, and the whole thing is going to be my show alone (modulo the command reference section which will owe much to previous authors).
But now I must mosey to the office and pick up the latest draft copy of P&X, which is in copyedit now.
And yet I continue, though this certainly blows away any other projects I thought I'd like to work on, at least through the summer. I have felt consistently psyched about this project for nearly two weeks now, which is something I couldn't have ever said about the other book. Here, I feel much closer to, and interested by, the topic, and the whole thing is going to be my show alone (modulo the command reference section which will owe much to previous authors).
But now I must mosey to the office and pick up the latest draft copy of P&X, which is in copyedit now.
Fantasy and Reality
Feb. 8th, 2002 11:17 amI sunk the better part of the last two days into Baldur's Gate. Yesterday I found myself wrapped up enough in it that, while riding on the T, I continued to feel real existential dread over my decision to accept a ranger and mage into my party over a probably stronger cleric. (The game limits your party size to six characters, so when you make new friends who wish to join you, you must kick people out. The dialogue strongly implies that the game will give you opportunities to reunite with these ousted characters later on, though.) Thankfully, I'm at a good break point right now, having completed the first dungeon (along with a goodly number of side-quests), and confident in knowing where I'm supposed to go next, thus not leaving me slavering for More Carnage. Watch as I Take Out The CD and Put It Away For Now.
Meanwhile, in the world outside of my head, things move along. Matt Sargent, arguably the most powerful voice in the world of Perl & XML, has responded the book draft, um, a little too late for our tastes, but there you go. We (which is to say I, assuming Erik is still feeling overburdened) now have today to decide whether it merits changes drastic enough to pull the book from production. I have not read it yet. I do this thing now.
First I say that last night was cool. Went to the MFA to see Outstandingly Entertaining Short Films, in a party led bycthulhia and populated by a sizable subset of the usual cthonic posse. I was nervous about seeing "Bullet in the Brain", because I had heard the original short story read on the radio show "Selected Shorts", and as the title suggests it involves, um, massive neurological trauma, which is a squicking point for me. I ended up enjoying the very nice film, of course, though I question the filmmaker's decision to flesh out the main character a little more with an introduction that makes him seem more contemptible. Was it meant to cushion the blow? Shrug.
There are no photographs of me wearing the 5,000 admission collar clips that cthulhia pinned on me as we wandered the museum, picking them up off the floor as we admired ahht. Sorry.magid thought that it looked like an urban interpretation of a shark's teeth necklace.
Meanwhile, in the world outside of my head, things move along. Matt Sargent, arguably the most powerful voice in the world of Perl & XML, has responded the book draft, um, a little too late for our tastes, but there you go. We (which is to say I, assuming Erik is still feeling overburdened) now have today to decide whether it merits changes drastic enough to pull the book from production. I have not read it yet. I do this thing now.
First I say that last night was cool. Went to the MFA to see Outstandingly Entertaining Short Films, in a party led by
cthulhia and populated by a sizable subset of the usual cthonic posse. I was nervous about seeing "Bullet in the Brain", because I had heard the original short story read on the radio show "Selected Shorts", and as the title suggests it involves, um, massive neurological trauma, which is a squicking point for me. I ended up enjoying the very nice film, of course, though I question the filmmaker's decision to flesh out the main character a little more with an introduction that makes him seem more contemptible. Was it meant to cushion the blow? Shrug.There are no photographs of me wearing the 5,000 admission collar clips that cthulhia pinned on me as we wandered the museum, picking them up off the floor as we admired ahht. Sorry.
magid thought that it looked like an urban interpretation of a shark's teeth necklace.*dead-eyed stare*
Feb. 1st, 2002 03:14 pmOK, here is my own friends-of-prog quiz. Tell me which is scarier.
a) The following email:
b) The fact that I find myself willing to consider it, despite my well-documented torment with "Perl & XML".
You may use a calculator. Some useful formulas are on the whiteboard.
a) The following email:
Hi Jason, I'm wondering whether you might be available to work on "Mac OS X in a Nutshell." If so, please let me know. I've got a rough plan for this book and would like someone to start working on it ASAP.
b) The fact that I find myself willing to consider it, despite my well-documented torment with "Perl & XML".
You may use a calculator. Some useful formulas are on the whiteboard.
OK, just glarmfed in all the changes I've made throughout the Book over the last month, and declared that to be The Second Draft, Dammit. Erik is now busily prepping it for production. This gives him no additional stress, since this is what he does all day long with other books, anyway.
Last night I went out for coffee at 10:00 pm after declaring to Carla that I was going to pull an all-nighter. Upon my return, I messed around on the Net for four hours and then went to bed.
(Truth: I don't think caffeine has any appreciable effect on me after a certain point in my daily cycle. But that's not really the point of this story.)
I have done all I can with this thing for now. It will be a good book, and yet I take frustration from the fact that it won't be mine, not really. It's half-or-more Erik's words, in the end, and it's not on a topic I feel really impassioned about. I'm too tired to be proud of it yet.
Maybe tomorrow.
For now, hum. I should go watch a movie or something. On second thought, it's too cruddy out. Movie tomorrow. I go to Micro Center again and buy extremely time-wasting game. Mm: and tell Arcus that I'm ready to work again. $$$.
My entire opinion of the Superbowl thingy:
While walking around outside and thinking about stuff, I realized that the Rams' helmet design, with the stylized spiral on either side, suggests that the players' heads are actually horned, as per their team's eponymous animal. I find that kind of neat, and shows a level of subtle totemic identification that I haven't seen elsewhere in professional sports.
Last night I went out for coffee at 10:00 pm after declaring to Carla that I was going to pull an all-nighter. Upon my return, I messed around on the Net for four hours and then went to bed.
(Truth: I don't think caffeine has any appreciable effect on me after a certain point in my daily cycle. But that's not really the point of this story.)
I have done all I can with this thing for now. It will be a good book, and yet I take frustration from the fact that it won't be mine, not really. It's half-or-more Erik's words, in the end, and it's not on a topic I feel really impassioned about. I'm too tired to be proud of it yet.
Maybe tomorrow.
For now, hum. I should go watch a movie or something. On second thought, it's too cruddy out. Movie tomorrow. I go to Micro Center again and buy extremely time-wasting game. Mm: and tell Arcus that I'm ready to work again. $$$.
My entire opinion of the Superbowl thingy:
While walking around outside and thinking about stuff, I realized that the Rams' helmet design, with the stylized spiral on either side, suggests that the players' heads are actually horned, as per their team's eponymous animal. I find that kind of neat, and shows a level of subtle totemic identification that I haven't seen elsewhere in professional sports.
The Globe finally got around to heeding my request for a front-page story about the weather.
I flinch that it's going on 4 p.m. now, the last day before deadline. Humf. We'll see what I can do. The magic thing is, both of this book's authors are ORA insiders, so we can sneak onto the production machines and swap stuff around even after it goes into editorial. In fact, Linda has told me just to concentrate on getting all the major additions and edits done for the 31st, and all the twiddly bits we can put off until QC. Yes, it's a hack, a dirty dirty hack. But, hey, it's a book on Perl, of all things, so.
I flinch that it's going on 4 p.m. now, the last day before deadline. Humf. We'll see what I can do. The magic thing is, both of this book's authors are ORA insiders, so we can sneak onto the production machines and swap stuff around even after it goes into editorial. In fact, Linda has told me just to concentrate on getting all the major additions and edits done for the 31st, and all the twiddly bits we can put off until QC. Yes, it's a hack, a dirty dirty hack. But, hey, it's a book on Perl, of all things, so.
Who told the weather that it could be all warm again? Grah.
Again I say: why isn't this business headline news? Gorgeous weather spikes paranoia in area man or its equivalent would fit in nicely under all that Patriots plap.
Speaking of, I enjoy seeing cool people enjoying sports, even though I do not at all. I think being uninterested in sports is one thing, but it takes extra mental focus to live in Boston and not care at least a little about Boston (or New England) teams. (And it requires vein-popping psychic resistance to feel nothing for the Red Sox, but it's not time for that yet.)
Anyway: yesterday I finished my rewrite of that section (it's about Perl and XML and Unicode, yus, funsy-wunsies) and the combination of feeling satisfied with a writing assignment and the warm weather made it difficult not to misperceive myself as having just finished a spring semester term paper for college. Hum.
In Diesel now. Happy. Other things about this place: it has a higher Room rating than the 1369 (to further abuse The Sims as a metaphor generation unit). More space, big glass front, booths and couches in back if you're lucky enough to score them. And, yes, as cthulhia points out, I'm more likely to bump into friends here. (However, I should note that my reuniting with Noah and Melissa occurred the very first time I ventured into the 1369, last summer.)
On the minus column, my cellphone doesn't work in here. It does in the other place. I just now wandered outside to call Erik, and ask if he wanted to sink some time into rewriting one particular section that we've been getting some strange remarks about. He said: Uuurgh, because he is swamped in his own work. So it looks like it's all me for the next two days. Hum hum hum. We'll see.
Again I say: why isn't this business headline news? Gorgeous weather spikes paranoia in area man or its equivalent would fit in nicely under all that Patriots plap.
Speaking of, I enjoy seeing cool people enjoying sports, even though I do not at all. I think being uninterested in sports is one thing, but it takes extra mental focus to live in Boston and not care at least a little about Boston (or New England) teams. (And it requires vein-popping psychic resistance to feel nothing for the Red Sox, but it's not time for that yet.)
Anyway: yesterday I finished my rewrite of that section (it's about Perl and XML and Unicode, yus, funsy-wunsies) and the combination of feeling satisfied with a writing assignment and the warm weather made it difficult not to misperceive myself as having just finished a spring semester term paper for college. Hum.
In Diesel now. Happy. Other things about this place: it has a higher Room rating than the 1369 (to further abuse The Sims as a metaphor generation unit). More space, big glass front, booths and couches in back if you're lucky enough to score them. And, yes, as cthulhia points out, I'm more likely to bump into friends here. (However, I should note that my reuniting with Noah and Melissa occurred the very first time I ventured into the 1369, last summer.)
On the minus column, my cellphone doesn't work in here. It does in the other place. I just now wandered outside to call Erik, and ask if he wanted to sink some time into rewriting one particular section that we've been getting some strange remarks about. He said: Uuurgh, because he is swamped in his own work. So it looks like it's all me for the next two days. Hum hum hum. We'll see.
I've been working all day on this section and am just now starting to squeeze out some paragraphs before bed. Probably I'll finish it up tomorrow morning in the 1369. It's nice to make any progress at all, and this particular section is arguably the most critical thing to fix, since it covers a crucial topic but was hailed by all the tech reviewers as being WEAK as it stood, but it's nonetheless frustrating to feel like I've covered so little ground.
I feel I made timing errors again, because at this rate, even if I finish reworking this section by tomorrow morning I am almost definitely not going to be able to hit all the stuff I want to hit before Thursday. But, I don't think I'll ask for an extension, if we do tackle all the major issues by then. The book won't be Exactly How I Want It, but it'll also Not Suck, and, really, I would like it to stop eating my life now, thank you.
So, from that point of view: four more days.
Tomorrow I'm slated to check in with Linda and Erik again, and I'll share this view with them. They'll probably say: sounds good. (Though I may sic Erik on a specific last-minute task or two that I have in mind.)
I feel I made timing errors again, because at this rate, even if I finish reworking this section by tomorrow morning I am almost definitely not going to be able to hit all the stuff I want to hit before Thursday. But, I don't think I'll ask for an extension, if we do tackle all the major issues by then. The book won't be Exactly How I Want It, but it'll also Not Suck, and, really, I would like it to stop eating my life now, thank you.
So, from that point of view: four more days.
Tomorrow I'm slated to check in with Linda and Erik again, and I'll share this view with them. They'll probably say: sounds good. (Though I may sic Erik on a specific last-minute task or two that I have in mind.)
Bad Rabbit I
Jan. 24th, 2002 06:54 pmI feel like Captain Turdbucket for being slacky in responding to some Boston Warren business last night, as this contributed to the consequence that we're all unscheduled and uncomped for Vericon, now. sigh.
leahleaf is now with us. That's nutty.
I was thinking the other day how my late 1999 visit (so long ago, now!) to Leah and Gang in MD was the first time I ever really experienced the joy of being part of a happy and creatively sparkling social group (Circle L!), even for just a weekend. Perhaps it was the beginning of the end of any feelings of contentedness that I had as a Maine resident. I moved to Somerville just about a year after that.
Now I get to play the hmm, have I met these people? game with other people's friends lists again. Ah, LiveJournal. God love you.
Another positive book meeting today. I hit my editorial stride this morning, when I got up wicked early, like 8:30 am (!!!), which always fills me with energy. I love looking up from my work to glance at my clock and seeing a before-noon time. The trick will be pulling this off repeatedly, of course.
One week left before either the to-production date, or the prog-begs-for-another-weekend-cuz-he's-this-close-to-being-done date. All is well.
leahleaf is now with us. That's nutty.I was thinking the other day how my late 1999 visit (so long ago, now!) to Leah and Gang in MD was the first time I ever really experienced the joy of being part of a happy and creatively sparkling social group (Circle L!), even for just a weekend. Perhaps it was the beginning of the end of any feelings of contentedness that I had as a Maine resident. I moved to Somerville just about a year after that.
Now I get to play the hmm, have I met these people? game with other people's friends lists again. Ah, LiveJournal. God love you.
Another positive book meeting today. I hit my editorial stride this morning, when I got up wicked early, like 8:30 am (!!!), which always fills me with energy. I love looking up from my work to glance at my clock and seeing a before-noon time. The trick will be pulling this off repeatedly, of course.
One week left before either the to-production date, or the prog-begs-for-another-weekend-cuz-he's-this-close-to-being-done date. All is well.
I am now feeling vaguely embarrassed at bringing two friends so far aboard LJ if it goes down so frequently.
I bet if, when discussing Byte Order Marks, I make the throwaway joke "Somebody set up us the BOM" the copy editors will, in fact, throw it away. I could insert a comment noting that it's intentional, but I don't know if I'd care that much about it.
Anyway, the joke wouldn't carry through translation.
I bet if, when discussing Byte Order Marks, I make the throwaway joke "Somebody set up us the BOM" the copy editors will, in fact, throw it away. I could insert a comment noting that it's intentional, but I don't know if I'd care that much about it.
Anyway, the joke wouldn't carry through translation.
M'mouf! M'mouf!
Jan. 21st, 2002 10:06 pmWorking on the Book right now is like pulling teeth, again. Bleah. It will pick up later, but for now it's really boring and I feel very easily distracted. I need another long cafe hangout session to re-energize. I consider going right now (Diesel is open for another two hours) but I think instead I will collect information for the rest of tonight, and tomorrow morning start to process it over coffee.
Getting up at a reasonable hour is hard, though. This morning at 9:30 or so Carla woke me up by coming into my room to turn off my alarm clock, which had, she said, been buzzing for a long, long time. Then I fell alseep again and had dreams about her coming back in and berating me about various minor household issues. (Yes, I asked her about this to confirm that it was, in fact, a dream.)
Kristin is again asking for help in setting up a genuine Pop Tart Cafe at the next Arisia, but the major difference between this and the previous (obviously scrapped) attempt is that she's now doing so a year in advance! This makes it seem pretty likely that the boston-warren will score some local Looney action, after two years (at that time) of being together. Cool.
January, 2003. I wonder what I'll have to show off by then?
We're also a little over the halfway point to the 2002 Origins. Denis has taken charge of this one, and four of us are going, the way things are looking now. Heck, I wonder what I'll have to show off by then?
Getting up at a reasonable hour is hard, though. This morning at 9:30 or so Carla woke me up by coming into my room to turn off my alarm clock, which had, she said, been buzzing for a long, long time. Then I fell alseep again and had dreams about her coming back in and berating me about various minor household issues. (Yes, I asked her about this to confirm that it was, in fact, a dream.)
Kristin is again asking for help in setting up a genuine Pop Tart Cafe at the next Arisia, but the major difference between this and the previous (obviously scrapped) attempt is that she's now doing so a year in advance! This makes it seem pretty likely that the boston-warren will score some local Looney action, after two years (at that time) of being together. Cool.
January, 2003. I wonder what I'll have to show off by then?
We're also a little over the halfway point to the 2002 Origins. Denis has taken charge of this one, and four of us are going, the way things are looking now. Heck, I wonder what I'll have to show off by then?
It was okay. Gaming is always A Good Thing, but I disappointed myself -- I thought I'd want to take more advantage of the con, doing the many things and meeting the many people available there, but this turned out not to be the case. I actually became fairly cranky on Saturday, and spent much of the afternoon and evening alone in our hotel room, reading and doing Book work.
Leah, my very own LJ Anonymous Coward, wrote me a nice letter before the weekend which opened with the observation that I, in her eyes, share an attribute with another favorite blogger, The Gus, in that I move through all these distinct circles of people, but seem happiest when alone, or with the computer and writing. My first impulse was to object, especially in light of the burst of sociability I've experienced since the year started, but I can object only up to a point. I can't deny the pattern I stick to of making forays into the wild now and then, but always retreating back home alone when I've used up all my mana points or whatever, so that I can recover and reflect. I might be making more sorties now, but the strategy's never changed, and it doesn't change when I go to a con, either.
It's true that I hung out with many interesting and fun people, but they're the same interesting and fun people I see several times a week nowadays, and in much less expensive venues, such as In Someone's House, In The Cafe, or Out Side. (Note that this is, in fact, a nice reminder that my life is beautiful right now.) Notable exceptions were other Lab Rabbits who aren't a staple of the local circles I'm in, and Zarf.
Zarf is so cool, mannnn, even if I was too grumpy to go party-wandering with him, and he didn't have any comments about Currents other than "Ahh, too many rules -- sorry, I am having a Kory moment." I wonder if cthulhia tried pressuring him into LJ. Well, at any rate, I'll see a lot more of him and everyone else I really ought to meet, game-design-wise, this summer at Origins.
But, for now, boy, I feel burned out on gaming. Redlining my leisure time is, in fact, not all that fun, especially not right now, as I feel the lukewarm breath of The Deadline on the back of my neck ever-so-slowly heating up. I will need to get a lot of work done before I'm again filled with the real desire to game -- gaming tastes sweetest, to me, when it's a mix of the given mental challenge and sociabily with the feeling that I've earned the chance to do this utterly unproductive thing for a while. With luck, I will meet this requirement before it's time for Vericon, this coming weekend.
Leah, my very own LJ Anonymous Coward, wrote me a nice letter before the weekend which opened with the observation that I, in her eyes, share an attribute with another favorite blogger, The Gus, in that I move through all these distinct circles of people, but seem happiest when alone, or with the computer and writing. My first impulse was to object, especially in light of the burst of sociability I've experienced since the year started, but I can object only up to a point. I can't deny the pattern I stick to of making forays into the wild now and then, but always retreating back home alone when I've used up all my mana points or whatever, so that I can recover and reflect. I might be making more sorties now, but the strategy's never changed, and it doesn't change when I go to a con, either.
It's true that I hung out with many interesting and fun people, but they're the same interesting and fun people I see several times a week nowadays, and in much less expensive venues, such as In Someone's House, In The Cafe, or Out Side. (Note that this is, in fact, a nice reminder that my life is beautiful right now.) Notable exceptions were other Lab Rabbits who aren't a staple of the local circles I'm in, and Zarf.
Zarf is so cool, mannnn, even if I was too grumpy to go party-wandering with him, and he didn't have any comments about Currents other than "Ahh, too many rules -- sorry, I am having a Kory moment." I wonder if cthulhia tried pressuring him into LJ. Well, at any rate, I'll see a lot more of him and everyone else I really ought to meet, game-design-wise, this summer at Origins.
But, for now, boy, I feel burned out on gaming. Redlining my leisure time is, in fact, not all that fun, especially not right now, as I feel the lukewarm breath of The Deadline on the back of my neck ever-so-slowly heating up. I will need to get a lot of work done before I'm again filled with the real desire to game -- gaming tastes sweetest, to me, when it's a mix of the given mental challenge and sociabily with the feeling that I've earned the chance to do this utterly unproductive thing for a while. With luck, I will meet this requirement before it's time for Vericon, this coming weekend.
(no subject)
Jan. 18th, 2002 01:16 amI can't believe Arisia is tomorrow. I admit to feeling a bit of trepidation, like I'm severely underprepared. Only a bit, since there's nothing for me to prepare, in reality, aside from following the orders of Fearless Warren Leader Cthulhia (this is not to imply that the boston-warren has just one Fearless Leader, if indeed it has any at all, but for all things relating to Boston cons she nonetheless fills the role very nicely).
The major similarity between this year and last year will be seeing my hero (even though I haven't communicated with him in, er, a year) Zarf again, and playing many many many games with he and many many other people, spreading the good Looney Lab news to all who will listen. The major difference is that I'll be there for all three days, I'll know people besides cthulhia (who herself is also a new person of a sort, in that she is a closer friend now to me than she was even just a year ago, when I, a trembling newbie to this whole area, spent the con clinging to her like a scared baby monkey), several friends from outside the boston-warren or either of the Circle Js will be in attendance, and I may actually attend some of the convention stuff outside of the gaming. Wow.
I'm still telling myself I'll be able to get some book-work in. Uh-huh.
The major similarity between this year and last year will be seeing my hero (even though I haven't communicated with him in, er, a year) Zarf again, and playing many many many games with he and many many other people, spreading the good Looney Lab news to all who will listen. The major difference is that I'll be there for all three days, I'll know people besides cthulhia (who herself is also a new person of a sort, in that she is a closer friend now to me than she was even just a year ago, when I, a trembling newbie to this whole area, spent the con clinging to her like a scared baby monkey), several friends from outside the boston-warren or either of the Circle Js will be in attendance, and I may actually attend some of the convention stuff outside of the gaming. Wow.
I'm still telling myself I'll be able to get some book-work in. Uh-huh.
I knew cthulhia was planning something nefarious for Mostly Looney Games Night this evening, since in this month's event announcement she was openly inviting people to mail her about planning birthday abuses for me, and furthermore I could see that she had successfully started a conspiracy, due to "tee-hee" posts in other people's journals.
I would like to think that what I encountered upon entering was a subset of the many things I imagined as possibilities, but these couldn't do justice to the reality: a Zendo cake, with marzipan Icehouse pieces and Jelly Belly marking stones (And a rule that I had to guess before anyone could eat it: A koan has the buddha nature if it is edible. (Counter-examples were ordinary plastic icehouse koans surrounding the cake.)) Plus, a Green Monkey cake! Yay. I hope someone really did get pictures...!pheromone?
And then we all had fun playing games for a few hours. Some people showed up who don't usually, too; Joe did, and Josh the GM, if only for a little while. Between all this, the various 'lectronic wellwishing I received, and even cards from distant family that alll arrived at once, I am a heppy ket, of the same variety as I have been more or less since First Night,
And then, just as with First Night, people got run over by cars again. Well, actually only almost, this time, but it was still scary. Stop doing that.
But, anyway. You all rock.
cthulhia was planning something nefarious for Mostly Looney Games Night this evening, since in this month's event announcement she was openly inviting people to mail her about planning birthday abuses for me, and furthermore I could see that she had successfully started a conspiracy, due to "tee-hee" posts in other people's journals.I would like to think that what I encountered upon entering was a subset of the many things I imagined as possibilities, but these couldn't do justice to the reality: a Zendo cake, with marzipan Icehouse pieces and Jelly Belly marking stones (And a rule that I had to guess before anyone could eat it: A koan has the buddha nature if it is edible. (Counter-examples were ordinary plastic icehouse koans surrounding the cake.)) Plus, a Green Monkey cake! Yay. I hope someone really did get pictures...!
pheromone?And then we all had fun playing games for a few hours. Some people showed up who don't usually, too; Joe did, and Josh the GM, if only for a little while. Between all this, the various 'lectronic wellwishing I received, and even cards from distant family that alll arrived at once, I am a heppy ket, of the same variety as I have been more or less since First Night,
And then, just as with First Night, people got run over by cars again. Well, actually only almost, this time, but it was still scary. Stop doing that.
But, anyway. You all rock.
Book Happy
Jan. 15th, 2002 02:42 pmUpdates with The Book:
Yet another thing I did last Friday involved mailing thank-you notes to all the book's tech reviewers, since I wouldn't get a chance to study their critiques in-depth for several more days. One of them wrote back to make sure I knew that, even though he wrote a long critique (I think it may have been the longest), he still found the book a winning introduction to the topic. Bonus points come from the fact that this particular person was the fellow from whom we stole the book's authoring priveleges.
Then yesterday Tim stopped Erik in the hall to tell him that he gave the book a once-over and thought it was great. !! This has significance on a practical level, since books are receiving a lot more scrutiny in the latter stages of their respective pipelines -- bad economy means less willingness to spend money printing a book that isn't a sure win. Though it's always been a contractual option, only recently have books been under real threat of getting killed right when they're about to go out the door -- it happened for the first time, I think, right when I left the company in October. So, apparently ours officially fails to suck enough to trip this switch.
Needless to say, I am now entirely optimistic and charged about the project, and fairly certain I will remain so through the end of the month, when the magic To-Production date passes.
Even though the cover design's been known for months, I finally started showing it off to Internet friends en masse yesterday. The reaction made me puff up and also step back, as I explained severally that, no, it's not on the shelves yet. Now I am pondering my original notion of hyping it up a little bit on my own website. I think what I'll do is hold off until the second draft is done... that's only two more weeks. Letting hype and reality fall out of synch on any level is something best avoided.
But, as a special to my bloggy friends: lookit.
Yet another thing I did last Friday involved mailing thank-you notes to all the book's tech reviewers, since I wouldn't get a chance to study their critiques in-depth for several more days. One of them wrote back to make sure I knew that, even though he wrote a long critique (I think it may have been the longest), he still found the book a winning introduction to the topic. Bonus points come from the fact that this particular person was the fellow from whom we stole the book's authoring priveleges.
Then yesterday Tim stopped Erik in the hall to tell him that he gave the book a once-over and thought it was great. !! This has significance on a practical level, since books are receiving a lot more scrutiny in the latter stages of their respective pipelines -- bad economy means less willingness to spend money printing a book that isn't a sure win. Though it's always been a contractual option, only recently have books been under real threat of getting killed right when they're about to go out the door -- it happened for the first time, I think, right when I left the company in October. So, apparently ours officially fails to suck enough to trip this switch.
Needless to say, I am now entirely optimistic and charged about the project, and fairly certain I will remain so through the end of the month, when the magic To-Production date passes.
Even though the cover design's been known for months, I finally started showing it off to Internet friends en masse yesterday. The reaction made me puff up and also step back, as I explained severally that, no, it's not on the shelves yet. Now I am pondering my original notion of hyping it up a little bit on my own website. I think what I'll do is hold off until the second draft is done... that's only two more weeks. Letting hype and reality fall out of synch on any level is something best avoided.
But, as a special to my bloggy friends: lookit.
This morning I finally got around to making an "I'm still alive -- really" post on my home weblog. Didn't link back here, becuase I'm not so sure that all I've written here would meet the jmac Weblog rule: write nothing that I wouldn't want everyone in the world reading. Or as cthulhia put it better, nothing I wouldn't want everyone in my addressbook reading. In other words, I blog the intersection of all the news I want to tell all my friends, and leave the rest for private communication. I suspect I've actually been keeping that rule even here rather well, but we'll see.
This may be put to the test soon, if Carla gets an LJ account, like I was suggesting to her the other day (before I thought about the consequences on my end). Yep, OK... I can already think of one post that would make her say "grr" at me. Politics.
I think one little thing I will do in the very near future is start up my own little hype machine about The Book. Start small, just with a link on jmac.org, and an image of the nice monkey-encrusted cover.
The 4-digit cafe's carrot raison muffins are THE BOMB, okay?
A reporter sent me mail today about ComicsML, asking for a callback. Interesting. Last week another author asked me if he could use ComicsML as a topic in his book about web accessibility. And I got cc:ed on a mail earlier this week on another person's discussion of comics accessibility. When it rains... It's a good rain, though. You bet your brisket that I leveraged ComicsML in my statement of objectives rewrite. I wonder what will happen next.
Speaking of, I contacted Lenny's daughter, who said she put my letter in Jon's mailbox Monday morning. I didn't see it there then, so yesterday I called Erik and asked him to double-check for me, and aye, there it was. Huh? Well, I fetched it and surrendered it to the Lab yesterday. The lady who received it seemed to have no issues with the fact that it was a late component. All is well.
cthulhia put it better, nothing I wouldn't want everyone in my addressbook reading. In other words, I blog the intersection of all the news I want to tell all my friends, and leave the rest for private communication. I suspect I've actually been keeping that rule even here rather well, but we'll see.This may be put to the test soon, if Carla gets an LJ account, like I was suggesting to her the other day (before I thought about the consequences on my end). Yep, OK... I can already think of one post that would make her say "grr" at me. Politics.
I think one little thing I will do in the very near future is start up my own little hype machine about The Book. Start small, just with a link on jmac.org, and an image of the nice monkey-encrusted cover.
The 4-digit cafe's carrot raison muffins are THE BOMB, okay?
A reporter sent me mail today about ComicsML, asking for a callback. Interesting. Last week another author asked me if he could use ComicsML as a topic in his book about web accessibility. And I got cc:ed on a mail earlier this week on another person's discussion of comics accessibility. When it rains... It's a good rain, though. You bet your brisket that I leveraged ComicsML in my statement of objectives rewrite. I wonder what will happen next.
Speaking of, I contacted Lenny's daughter, who said she put my letter in Jon's mailbox Monday morning. I didn't see it there then, so yesterday I called Erik and asked him to double-check for me, and aye, there it was. Huh? Well, I fetched it and surrendered it to the Lab yesterday. The lady who received it seemed to have no issues with the fact that it was a late component. All is well.
