was awesome. that goes almost without saying, i thought I’d have a great time, and I did once I got past my nervousness. i’m already looking forward to next year and I’m still in the hotel. One great thing that’s already come out of this is something I think will happen with increasingly regularity: I stumbled across a review looking for books by Steve Eickson and came across a review of Allistair Reynold’s most recent book by one of of the people who’d told me I should read Erickson. He also suggested a very smooth, smokey scotch to me. Anyway, this confrence was great and I think I’ll be gearing a lot more free time [once I have time that isn't free] toward scholarship and helping out the organization. Great fun will be had. More on that later. I must remember to look around at Drupal when I get a chance.
Archive for July, 2008
this confrence
Monday, July 14th, 2008More Fireworks
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
Fireworks, 4th of July, Boston
Monday, July 7th, 2008
Resolved: 7-01-2008
Sunday, July 6th, 2008I’ve decided here, half of the way through the calendar year and all the way into post-graduation life that I’m going to make a couple of small resolutions toward my general self-improvement:
- never take mass transit, unless I’m leaving Boston, this means walking or riding my bike so it’ll keep me in shape and saves money.
- Eat out no more than twice a week, this forces me to eat better and saves money.
- Buy only one book per month, this allows me to perhaps read the books I already own.
- Pay for everything in cash, so I know exactly how much money I’m spending.
There are of course other more nebulous goals that are implicit, like “write more!” or “read more!” or “find a fucking job” but those are a lot less concrete and harder to pin down. I’m starting smaller here, since my two New Year’s resolutions have stuck so far, Read 52 books and watch 104 movies. As of this writing I’ve read 27 books and watched 55 movies and I’m currently in week 27.
I’d also like to write here and post things here more often, making an effort to keep to some sort of schedule about putting stuff up here, just so there’s a stream of stuff daily just so I can be doing something to point to and see I’ve not frittered away my whole day. I’m thinking a picture 5 days a week and some MP3 blogging M-W-F like I’d planned previously. I’ve also really got to get a better theme up on here, I want something black and blue and grey and eerie, also with two columns. This would be a lot easier if I was a competant html/CSS coder. I know enough html to format forum posts but not much beyond that, so I’m stuff trying to hack away at customizing a pre-existing template. I’ll have to dig around for one I like tomorrow and start picking out this week’s pictures and music.
I’d like also to write some flash and short fiction in much larger quantities and get a better handle on Linux Administration and Bash scripting and the like. We’ll see how much I can keep to a schedule, it should be easier to do all of these things and also get out of my dank dark basement room because I am now in possession of a laptop computer.
Finally, I’ve got to decide whether to go back to SFQuarterly, or, more realistically, when to go back, since I do enjoy working for them, once I get back into the rhythm of things.
Anyway, I’m going to read a book until I pass out and try really hard to get out of bed before noon tomorrow so I can go down to the North End and eat pizza and go see a movie with Chelsea.
back in Boston, listing things I’d like to be doing.
Friday, July 4th, 2008So, I’m back here in Allston at my apartment, looking for work and messing about on the internet and reading and hopefully writing some stuff. I seem to be writing a lot of email recently. I’ve applied to a number of jobs I’m tagentially qualified to do or think I might be able to get hired to do. I bought a new laptop that will form my window onto the Internet and a portable, digital information hub for interesting ideas and articles and text and the like that’ll all get mixed around until I actually write some fiction. I’m also runing Linux on here, so that’s been a whole quality learning experience unto itself. It’s gotten very easy to use relative to my more abbortive attempts 3 or 4 summers ago.
I’ve found a piece by Warren Ellis on “where ideas come from” that I’ll just quote below in it’s entirety becase it’s brilliant and perverse in a way only he can be:
How It Works
I still get asked with appalling regularity “where my ideas come from.”
Here’s the deal. I flood my poor ageing head with information. Any information. Lots of it. And I let it all slosh around in the back of my brain, in the part normal people use for remembering bills, thinking about sex and making appointments to wash the dishes.
Eventually, you get a critical mass of information. Datum 1 plugs into Datum 2 which connects to Datum 3 and Data 4 and 5 stick to it and you’ve got a chain reaction. A bunch of stuff knits together and lights up and you’ve got what’s called “an idea”.
And for that brief moment where it’s all flaring and welding together, you are Holy. You can’t be touched. Something impossible and brilliant has happened and suddenly you understand what it would be like if Einstein’s brain was placed into the body of a young tyrannosaur, stuffed full of amphetamines and suffused with Sex Radiation.
That is what has happened to me tonight. I am beaming Sex Rays across the world and my brain is all lit up with Holy Fire. If I felt like it, I could shag a million nuns and destroy their faith in Christ.
From my chair.
See, this is the good bit about writing. It’s what keeps you going. It’s the wild rush of “shit, did I think of that?” with all kinds of weird chemicals shunting around your brain and ideas and images and moments and storyforms all opening up snapsnapsnap in your mind, a mass of new and unrealised possibilities.
It’s ten past two in the morning, and I’m completely wired, caught up in the new thing, shivering and laughing and glowing in the dark. Just as well it’s the middle of the night. No-one would be safe from me right now. I could read their minds and take over their heartbeats with a glare.
Faster than the speed of anyone.
That’s how it works.
(originally here.)
In other news, I’m headed to Kansas for the Annual SFRA confrence on the 9th, staying in a hotel attached to the confrence center and hopefully absorbing a passable introduction to the scholarship of SF. I hope also to meet lots of interesting people, I got my first printed and bound issue of the SFRAreview, which I’ll hopefully be published in shortly. I’ve also got a big stack of comics to read and a number of books. I’ve also got to fit in some fiction writing in there someplace, one flash fiction story ala 365tomorrows / week doesn’t seem an unreasonable goal. I’m also hoping to start research and reading in earnest for a long, long paper I’d like to write on Singularity as a Secular Millenial movement, a natural outgrowth of the rise of science and rationalism combined with the rise of secularism and the developement of AI etc. etc. I could study the subject for a year and get no where conclusive I think. I’m also hoping (once I charge my camera) to post a new photo here once a day, there’s really no point in curating a seperate photoblog, since having twice as many websites means that twice as many people won’t read it. Behold, my superior logic.
I also need to do a major overhaul of my use of tags and categories here, I’ve got to file down my use to one and sharpen my use of the other. or something. I also need to write about how if you spend more than an hour a day reading things online you’re doing yourself a disservice by not running Flock.