A Simple Way To Go Faster Than Light That Does Not Work

Dig this crazy WWII propaganda poster gallery from Life magazine. I thought I was well versed in the genre - indeed, ol' Rosie is represented here, as is the famously gruesome "This is the Enemy" series - but I have never seen most of these before, including several from Axis powers.

I love the first page's poster where the artist - who signed the work with a Nazi SS sigil - caricatures the incoming Americans as being murderous lunatics headed by the Ku Klux Klan. Or this one, encouraging American soldiers to surrender now so they can score with the ladies later.

(Also: Life magazine still exists as a discrete entity? I did not know that. Good on them!)

I discover that DEFCON - Everybody Dies has been ported to Mac; you can download a free demo at that link. For me personally, it is without a doubt the most powerfully and purely negative computer game I've played lately. I get very emotionally involved playing this, to the level where I feel real discomfort, almost to the point of literal nausea. I am not sure I'd want to play this game with another person... or maybe that would take the edge off. Who knows.

Objectively, this is all very interesting to me.

The game's worth experiencing for the way it mixes very clean, minimalist, even cold graphics with subtle sound effects and slow, dark ambient music that offers a continual dirge for the events that are unfolding (and which you are helping to cause). The overall effect is intensely disturbing even though it features no single element that would peg an MPAA-style content advisory.

This 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, 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.