One or two? Because I just discovered, after nearly 30 years of typing, that I've been doing it wrong for about half of those years.
Good grief, but this is going to be a hard habit to un-learn.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Friday, December 3, 2010
Guilty Reading Pleasures: Live and Let Die
I came across an old copy of an Ian Fleming James Bond novel, Live and Let Die, and decided to give it a chance. I'm not a fan of the few movies I've seen, newer ones that I've gone to with friends from the 90s and on. They strike me as adolescent boy wish-fulfillment fantasy with a sugar-coating of explosions. So I wondered if this book, which came out in the early 50s, would have the same sort of vibe.
Fortunately, it is harder to render explosions in a movie, and authors have less of an incentive to do so. (If our imaginations came with dolby surround sound, box office sales would suffer.) The book was the sort of fun, action based, semi-suspenseful romp I'd expected, with a bit of violence, some suspense (Fleming had the trick down of ending the chapters just where you wanted to keep reading), and the promise of sex more than the delivery of it. But what I didn't expect was the elegant language, the vivid sense of place, and a colorful cast of characters which were not as one-sided as they come out on the screen. Most of all, the book felt like an adventure.
Bond is in the US for most of this one, with a finish in Jamaica. The descriptions of Harlem capture both the grit and the elegance of the atomic age and the racial tensions of the inner city in the mid-century. The train-travel scenes made me long to take a diesel-powered voyage in silvery cars. And there's an underwater raid on a villain's lair with some truly delightful descriptions of scuba-diving amid teeming sea-life. Of course there's the satisfaction of projecting yourself onto the persona of a handsome, cool-under-pressure protagonist with a dashing sense of style.
There's an optimism in these ridiculous plots. There's the sense that we can sacrifice a great deal in the fight against evil, accept our losses, and enjoy a full breakfast or a carefully prepared cocktail when we have the chance.
And it's nice to be reminded that you can read for pleasure and still enjoy some fine language.
It's enough to make me forgive one of the stupidest lines of dialog I've ever read. When Bond and his lady-friend are tied together and towed naked behind the villain's boat, seconds away from being dragged across a lacerating coral reef so that their blood will summon a swarm of frenzied sharks that will both kill them and dispose of their bodies, the lady-friend, Solitaire, comes out with this gem:
"I didn't want it to end this way."
I hope I'm not spoiling things if I tell you it doesn't.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
NanoWrimo Update: Week One
I'm moving through this November's novel-writing experiment at a reasonable pace. It's not a pace that's going to get me to 50000 words by the end of the month. Maybe half that, if I'm lucky. But it's a pace, in the middle of a hectic November, so I'll take my victories where I can find them.
So far I've stuck with pounding it out on the Olivetta Lettera 32 typewriter. It doesn't have the fastest touch. The letter "a" doesn't show up clearly unless you give it some extra force, and the letter "p" tends to stick, which causes a real back-up of keys when you're in a hurry. So I'm well below my usual 120 wpm. But the added effort keeps my upper body and hands warm as the house moves into colder seasons and I resist turning the heat on. And the sound of a typewriter is something I have a fetish for.
I've noticed a couple of things about this effort:
I can't get 2000 words out in the hours I have free in a given day. I tend to think a little more about each sentence before I put it down, indelible as it is, and in many ways this seems to defeat the whole purpose of Nanowrimo.
The words I do get out seem a little less terrible than the words I got out in previous years, using a laptop computer.
Can't say I have a great explanation for this. Or whether another reader comparing the first draft of this year's manuscript to the first draft of another year would come to the same conclusion. (Don't worry. No readers will be subjected to this experiment.) I do have the sense that, by the time my manual-typing fingers have caught up with my brain, I've subconsciously edited out a lot of needless words that a computer keyboard would have obliged me by keeping up with.
So, result #1 of typewriting this year's Nano is, I probably won't be "winning" the project by the standard of pumping out 50,000 words by the end of November. But maybe result #2 is I get back into the routine of setting aside one or two typewritten pages each day. Which is, after all, a much more sustainable pace in the long-term, and a pace that produces 182,500 words in a year (approximately!).
If I'm really lucky, result #3 will be a January manuscript that doesn't require quite as much cutting as previous drafts have. Maybe something even worth sharing. But we'll see.
Perhaps the greatest thing about having a day-job is the ability to enjoy your hobbies for what they are.
So far I've stuck with pounding it out on the Olivetta Lettera 32 typewriter. It doesn't have the fastest touch. The letter "a" doesn't show up clearly unless you give it some extra force, and the letter "p" tends to stick, which causes a real back-up of keys when you're in a hurry. So I'm well below my usual 120 wpm. But the added effort keeps my upper body and hands warm as the house moves into colder seasons and I resist turning the heat on. And the sound of a typewriter is something I have a fetish for.
I've noticed a couple of things about this effort:
I can't get 2000 words out in the hours I have free in a given day. I tend to think a little more about each sentence before I put it down, indelible as it is, and in many ways this seems to defeat the whole purpose of Nanowrimo.
The words I do get out seem a little less terrible than the words I got out in previous years, using a laptop computer.
Can't say I have a great explanation for this. Or whether another reader comparing the first draft of this year's manuscript to the first draft of another year would come to the same conclusion. (Don't worry. No readers will be subjected to this experiment.) I do have the sense that, by the time my manual-typing fingers have caught up with my brain, I've subconsciously edited out a lot of needless words that a computer keyboard would have obliged me by keeping up with.
So, result #1 of typewriting this year's Nano is, I probably won't be "winning" the project by the standard of pumping out 50,000 words by the end of November. But maybe result #2 is I get back into the routine of setting aside one or two typewritten pages each day. Which is, after all, a much more sustainable pace in the long-term, and a pace that produces 182,500 words in a year (approximately!).
If I'm really lucky, result #3 will be a January manuscript that doesn't require quite as much cutting as previous drafts have. Maybe something even worth sharing. But we'll see.
Perhaps the greatest thing about having a day-job is the ability to enjoy your hobbies for what they are.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
NanoWrimo Logo
I may be taking on the NanoWrimo again this year. Already got some notes together on several characters and a basic idea behind the driving force of what might charitably be called a plot.
And of course, my heart is with the people over at the Typewriter Brigade, who are signing on to pound their 50,000 words out on manual typewriters this year. I may follow suit. Haven't decided. A laptop (preferably a disconnected one) is just such a handy device for organizing the notes, keeping characters and setting straight, etc. But that doesn't mean I can't leave those digitized notes off to the side and pound out the actual draft on one of my beloved old machines.
If I do this, it will by my third time through, and my fourth novel. I hit the 50,000 word mark both in 2002 and 2004, but the only time I've actually completed a story, instead of just a word-count, was sometime in 2007, where I hit 90,000 words, and I didn't do it in November, nor did I complete it in one month. That one was a lot better than the first two, though, and I learned the persistence required to finish it from those previous Novembers.
Perhaps this is the year that I come up with something worth finishing, revising, and submitting. Time will tell, I suppose.
But November is not the time to consider such things. November is the month to put out eight double spaced typewritten pages every day until you have a stack 200 high.
I found an image that captures the spirit of the month quite nicely, and capped it off with my new favorite slogan.
I think that sums the project up rather nicely, don't you?
And of course, my heart is with the people over at the Typewriter Brigade, who are signing on to pound their 50,000 words out on manual typewriters this year. I may follow suit. Haven't decided. A laptop (preferably a disconnected one) is just such a handy device for organizing the notes, keeping characters and setting straight, etc. But that doesn't mean I can't leave those digitized notes off to the side and pound out the actual draft on one of my beloved old machines.
If I do this, it will by my third time through, and my fourth novel. I hit the 50,000 word mark both in 2002 and 2004, but the only time I've actually completed a story, instead of just a word-count, was sometime in 2007, where I hit 90,000 words, and I didn't do it in November, nor did I complete it in one month. That one was a lot better than the first two, though, and I learned the persistence required to finish it from those previous Novembers.
Perhaps this is the year that I come up with something worth finishing, revising, and submitting. Time will tell, I suppose.
But November is not the time to consider such things. November is the month to put out eight double spaced typewritten pages every day until you have a stack 200 high.
I found an image that captures the spirit of the month quite nicely, and capped it off with my new favorite slogan.
I think that sums the project up rather nicely, don't you?
Kubuntu Installation
The Wife laughs at my obsession with Linux Distributions. As I'm changing out my desktop wallpaper or re-arranging my applets for the hundredth time, she'll say, "Linux is like home decorating for boys." Why not get some real work done instead of making the screen look pretty? But then again I could ask her the same thing about the furniture in the living room.
Came home for my middle of the day break from work (They call it a "split shift" but I call it "Two days for the wages of one.") and ended up spending hours--hours!--in putting Kubuntu on the desktop, configuring applications, getting the layout just the way I like it. I should have taken a nap, and now I'm facing the ordeal of a six-hour closing shift with very little sleep. Not entirely sure how I'll be getting through it, but I suppose we'll find a way. Adrenaline and coffee, most likely.
Oh, but the Kubuntu. It looks amazing, like it just brought the old computer into the "latest generation" of computer technology. Transparent, window effects, shiny, glowing, fresh, and surprisingly intuitive. Like Windows Vista could have been, if it didn't bog much newer machines down into a tub of molasses.
For such a flashy and attractive Desktop Environment, Kubuntu actually runs rather well on an old P4 with no dedicated graphics card. There's a little hesitation on opening applications, but once they're up, they're up. And I much prefer the overall feel of this desktop environment to the Gnome I was running before. Text displays crisper and smaller, which satisfies me on some strange control-freak level, and I can actually make use of this vast monitor's screen space with various windows, etc.
Strangely enough, the whole package downloaded and installed right from the standard Gnome desktop in about ten minutes. One quick re-boot and I was there. The joy of messing about with all these operating systems and desktop environments is it feels like getting to use a new computer every few days, without spending a penny. (The rest of those lost hours went to the "home decorating" phase.)
I have now spent some time with all the major Ubuntu flavors (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and the small and strikingly efficient newcomer Lubuntu) as well as a lot of lesser-known alternatives (Slitaz, Puppy, Damn Small Linux, the craptacular Xandros that came with the Asus Eee). Ubuntu, in it's incarnations, seems to have most of the bases covered, at this point. Every one I try, I like better than the last. Except for esoteric applications (extremely old hardware, custom built solutions to uncommon problems, etc.) it's various flavors seem to do what your "average" hobbyist/user with a little patience and a willingness to experiment would expect it to do, usually with delightful style.
All this distro-hopping has made me start to wonder a bit just what Ubuntu is. Before I started sailing Linux waters, I always assumed an operating system was a whole shiny package. It was, you know, the part of the computer that wasn't made of plastic and microchips but wasn't consumer software from a shrink-wrapped box, either. I assumed that the desktop environment was an integral part of an operating system, since it gave you handles to drag your windows around and icons to click to launch your video games.
But here comes Ubuntu, which is an operating system, I think, but it's not really, it's just a "distribution" of Linux. And you can have a text-only install of Ubuntu (just like DOS before the Windows came along) or you can load it up with your choice of window manager (Gnome, KDE, XFCE, LCXD) to turn it into one of it's derivatives (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu). Or you can go a whole 'nother route, skip the Ubuntu piece, and build Linux into something completely different like Red Hat, Slitaz or Slackware.
Oh yeah, and the Ubuntu code was all built up by some company called Canonical which is controlled by a man named Mark Shuttleworth, who was one of the first people to pay Russians to go to space as a tourist. (I thought his name was a joke but was apparently, mistaken.) His team built the Ubuntu distribution on top of another distribution called Debian. I'm not sure if Debian's still another layer in the cake or just something that's to the side, at this point. It becomes rather confusing. And just what this Canonical company gets from developing all this software is also unclear to me.
But I am inclined to like them, since it all seems to work despite my not-understanding. It's a tribute to the engineers at every level, that they make it simple enough for a dilettante like me to have so much fun and get so much done with their efforts.
What does become clear from all this messing around is how modular all these operating system pieces are. The different window managers all look remarkably different, but all it takes to change them up is switching out a few packages from the Ubuntu Software Center. If you're clever, or you read the right on-line tutorial, you can do this with a few keystrokes at the command line. There are even tools out there for grabbing all the bits you like from the various distributions, pre-loading it with the open-source applications you prefer, stamping your own name on it, burning it to a CD and calling it your own. The Creative Commons license will even let you charge money for it, which is a nice touch, since it gives you the incentive to add a bit of value in the form of installation and training. (Maybe this is what Canonical is after?) The only thing you can't do is tell the person who buys it from you that they can't turn around and do the same thing.
Hmm... If I spend more time procrastinating than I do writing, perhaps I should reconsider where my priorities lie. Then again, these are all just hobbies, so it's not like I have to worry about making a living from either of them. That's the freedom that comes from working a full-time job. Then again, if somebody did want to offer me some money...
Which would you rather pay me for? Turning your old computer into a fantastic new Linux machine, or telling you a story?
Came home for my middle of the day break from work (They call it a "split shift" but I call it "Two days for the wages of one.") and ended up spending hours--hours!--in putting Kubuntu on the desktop, configuring applications, getting the layout just the way I like it. I should have taken a nap, and now I'm facing the ordeal of a six-hour closing shift with very little sleep. Not entirely sure how I'll be getting through it, but I suppose we'll find a way. Adrenaline and coffee, most likely.
Oh, but the Kubuntu. It looks amazing, like it just brought the old computer into the "latest generation" of computer technology. Transparent, window effects, shiny, glowing, fresh, and surprisingly intuitive. Like Windows Vista could have been, if it didn't bog much newer machines down into a tub of molasses.
For such a flashy and attractive Desktop Environment, Kubuntu actually runs rather well on an old P4 with no dedicated graphics card. There's a little hesitation on opening applications, but once they're up, they're up. And I much prefer the overall feel of this desktop environment to the Gnome I was running before. Text displays crisper and smaller, which satisfies me on some strange control-freak level, and I can actually make use of this vast monitor's screen space with various windows, etc.
Strangely enough, the whole package downloaded and installed right from the standard Gnome desktop in about ten minutes. One quick re-boot and I was there. The joy of messing about with all these operating systems and desktop environments is it feels like getting to use a new computer every few days, without spending a penny. (The rest of those lost hours went to the "home decorating" phase.)
I have now spent some time with all the major Ubuntu flavors (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and the small and strikingly efficient newcomer Lubuntu) as well as a lot of lesser-known alternatives (Slitaz, Puppy, Damn Small Linux, the craptacular Xandros that came with the Asus Eee). Ubuntu, in it's incarnations, seems to have most of the bases covered, at this point. Every one I try, I like better than the last. Except for esoteric applications (extremely old hardware, custom built solutions to uncommon problems, etc.) it's various flavors seem to do what your "average" hobbyist/user with a little patience and a willingness to experiment would expect it to do, usually with delightful style.
All this distro-hopping has made me start to wonder a bit just what Ubuntu is. Before I started sailing Linux waters, I always assumed an operating system was a whole shiny package. It was, you know, the part of the computer that wasn't made of plastic and microchips but wasn't consumer software from a shrink-wrapped box, either. I assumed that the desktop environment was an integral part of an operating system, since it gave you handles to drag your windows around and icons to click to launch your video games.
But here comes Ubuntu, which is an operating system, I think, but it's not really, it's just a "distribution" of Linux. And you can have a text-only install of Ubuntu (just like DOS before the Windows came along) or you can load it up with your choice of window manager (Gnome, KDE, XFCE, LCXD) to turn it into one of it's derivatives (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu). Or you can go a whole 'nother route, skip the Ubuntu piece, and build Linux into something completely different like Red Hat, Slitaz or Slackware.
Oh yeah, and the Ubuntu code was all built up by some company called Canonical which is controlled by a man named Mark Shuttleworth, who was one of the first people to pay Russians to go to space as a tourist. (I thought his name was a joke but was apparently, mistaken.) His team built the Ubuntu distribution on top of another distribution called Debian. I'm not sure if Debian's still another layer in the cake or just something that's to the side, at this point. It becomes rather confusing. And just what this Canonical company gets from developing all this software is also unclear to me.
But I am inclined to like them, since it all seems to work despite my not-understanding. It's a tribute to the engineers at every level, that they make it simple enough for a dilettante like me to have so much fun and get so much done with their efforts.
What does become clear from all this messing around is how modular all these operating system pieces are. The different window managers all look remarkably different, but all it takes to change them up is switching out a few packages from the Ubuntu Software Center. If you're clever, or you read the right on-line tutorial, you can do this with a few keystrokes at the command line. There are even tools out there for grabbing all the bits you like from the various distributions, pre-loading it with the open-source applications you prefer, stamping your own name on it, burning it to a CD and calling it your own. The Creative Commons license will even let you charge money for it, which is a nice touch, since it gives you the incentive to add a bit of value in the form of installation and training. (Maybe this is what Canonical is after?) The only thing you can't do is tell the person who buys it from you that they can't turn around and do the same thing.
# # #
Hmm... If I spend more time procrastinating than I do writing, perhaps I should reconsider where my priorities lie. Then again, these are all just hobbies, so it's not like I have to worry about making a living from either of them. That's the freedom that comes from working a full-time job. Then again, if somebody did want to offer me some money...
Which would you rather pay me for? Turning your old computer into a fantastic new Linux machine, or telling you a story?
Friday, October 22, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Old People's Houses
There is a Sadness when you visit an Old Person's house and you can date the moment at which they stopped engaging with the world. It is the date on the top magazine of the stack by the easy chair, or on the bookshelf of sun-faded paperbacks. It's the date on that first page with the library of congress information, the ISBN and the rest of the numbers. It's the last important book they read, the Pulitzer Prize winner from 1967, or 1974, or 1988. It's the shelf full of James Michener, or James Clavell, or Norman Mailer. This marks the point at which they have not only given up on acquiring the new, but have ceased to trouble themselves with unloading the old.
These old people typically have newer things in their house than these artifacts. Usually the television is less than a few years old, and the microwave might be battered although it's certainly not antique. They might even have a gleaming stainless steel refrigerator with an ice-maker and dispenser built into the door. But you can tell their heart is not in these things. Most likely some child or grand-child or social worker has stopped by, said, "Oh Harold, you can't possibly go on living with this old thing in your home," and taken it upon themselves to arrange delivery and installation of the replacement. And the Old Person likely shrugged and said, "sure, I suppose so," and sat looking over the top of his bifocals with a battered paperback in his hand, a bemused expression on his face, while his caregiver fussed and grunted to attach co-ax and AC power and argue with utilities over the phone.
If it's a good natured Old Person, he perhaps said to his caregiver, "You like to read, do you? Why don't you take this copy of Shogun with you? Maybe you'll enjoy it. Don't mention it, it's the least I can do."
These old people typically have newer things in their house than these artifacts. Usually the television is less than a few years old, and the microwave might be battered although it's certainly not antique. They might even have a gleaming stainless steel refrigerator with an ice-maker and dispenser built into the door. But you can tell their heart is not in these things. Most likely some child or grand-child or social worker has stopped by, said, "Oh Harold, you can't possibly go on living with this old thing in your home," and taken it upon themselves to arrange delivery and installation of the replacement. And the Old Person likely shrugged and said, "sure, I suppose so," and sat looking over the top of his bifocals with a battered paperback in his hand, a bemused expression on his face, while his caregiver fussed and grunted to attach co-ax and AC power and argue with utilities over the phone.
If it's a good natured Old Person, he perhaps said to his caregiver, "You like to read, do you? Why don't you take this copy of Shogun with you? Maybe you'll enjoy it. Don't mention it, it's the least I can do."
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