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Below are the 25 most recent friends journal entries:

November 8th, 2009
07:49 am fledgist [Link]	Why we fail ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) Tags: commentary, john maxwell (Leave a comment)
12:33 pm desperance [Link]	Sunday morning: a lament Sodding cats. Sodden carpet. No more sod-it coffee. (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
01:25 pm mizkit [Link]	on signing tours For the record, I’m not going on a signing tour in a couple weeks. I’m going home to Alaska to visit family and friends, and am stuffing a couple of book signings in on the way through. But since I’ve been talking about the signings, many of you have hopefully suggested you would very much like me to come to your location and sign books. I, too, would like to go to your location and sign books. I think it would be tremendously awesome. I would, however, have to sell about 300% more books than I do in order to make it even vaguely feasible. It’s not a lack of promotion on the publisher’s part, or a writer having to do all the publicity leg work herself. It’s pure finances. As a rule, when you buy one of my books new, I get about a dollar from that sale. That’s the money I live on, day to day. That’s what I pay bills and rent and student loans with. So in order to fly to New York on your average economy ticket, I’d have be certain of selling, oh, say, an additional 600 books at a signing in order to break even. And that’s not including food or hotel, so throw those in and even if you’re being very cautious with money you’re looking at needing to sell an additional thousand or twelve hundred books to not lose money on the prospect. And really, most people at book signings bring the books they’ve already bought to get them signed, so even if by some incredibly unlikely stroke of luck I had 1200 people show up to a signing (and I’m much more in the realm of “if 40 people show up it’s an unqualified success”), the odds of selling 1200 books would be infinitesimally small. So although I have a good solid readership (for which I am extremely grateful), there just simply aren’t enough dollars coming in to support a self-financed book tour. Ah! you say, so get your publisher to send you on a tour! Well, the finances for the publisher are basically the same. My sales numbers–which, like my readership, are good solid numbers–are not nearly that good. I’m not a bestseller in terms of moving a large enough quantity of any given novel in the first month of publication. Over my career thus far my books have had what the industry refers to as “legs”–in other words, I’m still selling a lot of copies of URBAN SHAMAN, even 4.5 years after it came out. Now, if I could get everybody who’s bought a copy of URBAN SHAMAN to buy my next book the month it came out, yeah, I’d probably all of a sudden get to have shiny words like “USA Today Bestseller” or possibly “New York Times Bestseller” in front of my name. And there’s a degree of self-perpetuation to that, so once you start reaching that status it may become worth it to the publisher to (probably) lose money on financing a tour themselves, in hopes of making it up in sales down the road. I’d greatly love to reach that status, or be in a position where it’s financially feasible to take myself on a signing tour and go all over the place to meet people. But for the moment, I’m really only ever going to be able to manage signings at places that I’m going to anyway, and sadly there just aren’t that many of those places to begin with. :) (x-posted from the essential kit) Current Mood: explanatory Tags: book signings, i love my readers, industry essays (Leave a comment)
11:45 am tamaranth [Link]	[concert] Shostakovich / Rachmaninoff, Philharmonia @ RFH, 5.11.09 Review @ ArtsDesk.com Philharmonia, Mikhail Pletnev: piano, Nikolai Lugansky Shostakovich - Festival Overture Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto #1 in F sharp minor Rachmaninoff - Symphony #2 in E minor The Shostakovich is humorous and playful and martial -- doesn't capture me at all despite Pletnev's obvious enjoyment. Rachmaninoff hadn't quite got the hang of piano concertos when he wrote the first one. (I'm not clear whether this was the original version or the heavily-revised 1917 version.) Lots of splendid phrases and promising crescendos but they didn't seem to fit together. Less distinctively Rachmaninoff at the beginning, very Romantic: then it got hectic, fabulous modulations (like Brahms!) Lugansky's playing bright and crisp and precise but he seemed too ... formal? cool? detached? Rachmaninoff Symphony #2: I've never really got the hang of the symphonies but this was delightful. The acoustics were weird and wonderful, the xylophone apparently somewhere above and behind me! And the music's perfect Rachmaninoff: cold and clear and Russian, moments that sound like Piano Concerto #3, moments that remind me of Spartacus. The 4th movement is marvellous: raucous, hectic, then resolving to fugue in a descending carillon, every instrument fitting together. For this I missed fireworks, but it was worth it. Tags: reviews: concerts (Leave a comment)
11:34 am tamaranth [Link]	[concert] Mendelssohn / Brahms, Philharmonia @ RFH, 22.10.09 Philharmonia, Christoph von Dohnányi: piano, Yefim Bronfman Mendelssohn: Midsummer Night's Dream Overture Brahms: Symphony no 3 in F major Brahms: Concerto for Piano no 2 in B flat major The Mendelssohn doesn't really do anything for me, but it's pleasant. The Brahms Symphony hooked me in the first phrase! The finale is like an intricately patterned and textured living carpet, organic and velvety and prickly and glittery. Ravishingly romantic (and Romantic). A depressing %age of the audience left at the interval ... I love the Brahms Piano Concerti and know them both pretty much by heart, so it's always interesting to find something new. I hear the inbetweens, the sussurus of strings, more clearly when I can see them and see how they fit into the changing seascape (water moving, rise and fall) of the piece. And that fabulous campanile cadence in the second movement sends shivers down my spine. The delicacy of those eerie faltering phrases in the 3rd is almost drowned out from the choir seats: the orchestra's in the way. 4th is civilised and domestic and matutinal: con brio for sure! Bronfman is in his fifties, quite a change from the usual young virtuosi: it's fascinating to watch him play, a real sense of intimacy and familiarity, a sense that he's played this piece many times and explores it more each time. Tags: reviews: concerts (Leave a comment)
12:23 pm feorag [Link]	Public service announcement Please put the unmitigated sentimentalised rubbish that is generally known as the "War poets" under a cut. Some of us are glad that many of them died young and therefore produced less material for inflicting on schoolkids as part of the organised campaign against reading for pleasure. Thank you. Current Location: In a neutral country, thank the imaginary friends (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
11:26 am tamaranth [Link]	[theatre] La Cage Aux Folles, Playhouse Theatre, 19.10.09 La Cage Aux Folles -- Playhouse Theatre Featuring the subtle and restrained ... no, sorry, doesn't work. Featuring John Barrowman, who is shouty and melodramatic (which is just right for the character and the production) but not exactly acting. He does carry off the costumes well, though. And I warmed to him when he lost it a bit in the improv -- he was clearly having such fun. Marvellous set: curiously asexual and wholesome, good clean fun (the lewdest thing is JB eating a croissant) despite the louche subject matter and the ultra-camp ambience. Tags: reviews: theatre (Leave a comment)
11:21 am dmwcarol [Link]	For Remembrance Sunday ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) (Leave a comment)
12:18 pm mizkit [Link]	questions answered I asked people on Facebook to ask random questions for me to answer. Q&As behind the cut. :) ( Read the rest of this entry » ) (x-posted from the essential kit) Current Mood: revelatory Tags: interviews, questions answered (Leave a comment)
11:27 am feorag [Link]	Oslo part 2: Nøgne Ø and Oslo Mikrobryggeriet And, continuing on from my last post, where I advocate sensible drinking through knowing about your booze, here's what I had yesterday. ( quality beer, mostly ) A final link, as requested by rgovrebo. I'm working on improving Norwegian drinking attitudes, one Norwegian at a time, so here's the Norske Ølvenners Landsforbund, the Norwegian equivalent of CAMRA. Tags: beer, travel (Leave a comment)
11:01 am ffutures [Link]	Dragonmeet scenarios I'll be running two adventures at Dragonmeet 2009 Slot: AM Slot System: Forgotten Futures XI: Planets of Peril Adventure title: A Ceres of Unfortunate Events The Smithsonian Institution needs scientists and other personnel for an interesting mission - exploring the water-filled interior of the asteroid Ceres. Somehow the adventurers have exactly the right combination of skills they're looking for. It's the opportunity of a lifetime... just hope it isn't the final opportunity of your lifetime. 3-6 players 2-3 hours characters provided. Slot: PM Slot System: Forgotten Futures XI: Planets of Peril Adventure Title: Earth Girls Aren't Easy After the mysterious death of a mine owner, his daughter must travel to Titan to unravel his affairs and get the mine back into production. Your mission, should you choose to accept, is to make sure that she doesn't rock the boat too much. Titan has a lot of secrets, and it will be a disaster if some of them come out... 3-6 players 2-3 hours characters provided. As usual I'll also be selling stuff for charity. If I understand things correctly I'll be in the basement near the stairs - same place as last year. Hope I'll see some of you there. Tags: forgotten futures, rpg, stanley weinbaum (Leave a comment)
10:59 am tamaranth [Link]	[art] Endless Forms, Fitzwilliam, 11.09.09 Endless Forms -- Fitzwilliam, 11.09.09 (closed 4.10.09) Exhibition site Highlights included: William Dyce's Pegwell Bay, Kent - a Recollection of October 5th 1858: geologising middle-class families. Donati's comet is in the sky overhead, visible by day, but nobody looks up. Patrick Syme's edition of Werner's Nomenclature of Colours Arranged so as to Render it Highly Useful to the Arts and Sciences, Particularly Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Mineralogy and Morbid Anatomy: Annexed to which are Examples Selected from Well-Known Objects in the Animal, Vegetable and Mineral Kingdoms. Darwin used this for his descriptions of specimens. The Google version omits the Examples, which is a shame: Landseer's The Cat's Paw, which is a nasty and deeply disturbing depiction of animal 'cruelty'. I did enjoy the exhibition but it really needed a second visit for me to pull it together in my head: and that first visit was just after my interview with the employment agency that landed me full-time employment ... Tags: reviews: art (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
10:48 am feorag [Link]	Please send some SNP ministers here. The Scottish Government has a problem with the way the Scots drink, and seem to want to make us more like Scandinavia. Last night, I learned a lot about the way Norwegians drink, and I gather the other Scandinavian nations are similar. In summary: the sort of policies the Scottish Government wishes to introduce seem to encourage the sort of irresponsible drinking they would have us believe they want to prevent. Firstly, our dear politicians will be happy to learn that Norwegians drink less than most. Unfortunately, they drink their entire weekly quota in one big binge, usually on Saturday night. And their government's bad attitude towards alcohol means that the majority don't see any reason for drinking alcohol other than to get steamin' to the point where they can hardly walk. I suspect the main customers for the micros are foreign EBCU members, and people seem to think I'm a little odd for wanting to savour my beer and take time over it. I don't want to be drunk until the end of the night - too drunk too soon, and it gets difficult to appreciate the beer. Alcohol purchased for consumption at home is significantly cheaper than that bought in the pub, so here they have "pre-pub" parties to make sure they don't have to spend too much when they eventually get to the pub. This means that there are really drunk people out and about a lot earlier - by the time they get to the pub, most of them are more inebriated than we are upon leaving. And yes, there are accidents and trouble because of it. The stuff bought for drinking at home seems to be mostly wine. That might be because the difference in price between that and beer is not so great compared to the difference in alcoholic strength; it might be because that's pretty much all the alcohol monopoly stocks. For a country that takes so much pride in its environmental-friendliness, it seems odd that drink imported from a long way away should be preferred by the government to stuff made locally. Again, it might be my being odd, as one of the reasons I hardly drink wine is because I get very drunk very quickly on it. I suspect that that fault is exactly why it is preferred here! Also, 99% of what beer there is here is pseudo-pils, because nobody is drinking the stuff because they like beer - they're drinking it simply to get drunk. Solutions? Well that's tricky. Finland tried to reduce the tax on beer, in an attempt to encourage people to drink weaker stuff but as the link between alcohol and anything other than getting legless has been broken, it just didn't work - people just went out and got rat-arsed on cheaper drink. I figure, being a beer snob, that if you want people to drink more moderately, you need them to appreciate what they are drinking and to take pleasure from the flavour of what they are consuming as well as from the alcohol content. Progressive beer duty, where smaller breweries pay less tax? It would help, but the Vinmonopoliet would also need to stock more of the small Norwegian breweries' products too, and promote them in terms of their flavours and variety. And it would take more than that - you'd need to take a similar approach to other drinks - fewer wines, but better ones, and hold some tutored tastings. The other thing is that here, bars seem to be just places to drink, with little, if any food. In Germany, kids end up in pubs every Sunday, where they go for meals with several generations of their family. They learn how to behave in pubs from a very early age, and their first beer is probably a mouthful slipped to them by one of their parents. Strangely the Germans, whilst they do get drunk, seem to mostly behave themselves when sozzled. I suspect there is a connection. Current Mood: sober Tags: beer, travel (4 comments \| Leave a comment)
03:50 am rosefox [Link]	"Did did did did did and did!" ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) Current Mood: tired Tags: behavior.planning, experiences.work.freelance, stuff.money (Leave a comment)
06:45 am captainlucy [Link]	Oh Sir, Boxing??? "There's nothing wrong with boxing. It's one of the great working class escapes, is boxing. It's just sport, like any other. Two highly trained athletes at the peak of physical perfection, trying to outwit each other in a ring of combat. In fact, at its best, it's not a sport, it's an artform." "Female topless boxing???" - Lister and Kryten, Red Dwarf "Last Day" Not that it's a sport I usually go in for, but I found last night's world heavyweight boxing fascinating. Not because there were two massive blokes pummeling each other with sledgehammer rights and lefts, but precisely because they weren't. And quite rightly, given the contenders. Challenger David Haye (6ft3, 15stone8/218lbs/98.7kg, reach 78ins) against the giant Nikolay Valuev (7ft 2, 22stone8/316lbs/143.1kg, reach 88ins). Unsurprisingly, Haye did not want to get caught by the larger man, as chances are one good blow from Valuev would have ended the match there and then. So he used something sorely lacking in most heavyweight fights I have seen - speed, grace and cunning to stay largely out of the other's reach, coming in only occasionally to land a cheeky body blow or a light jab which his opponent may not even have felt but which would have got marked by the judges. And every now and again, he did manage to land a telling blow which obviously affected the larger man, such as in the 11th round when Valuev was visibly wobbling and only just managed to avoid getting caught with a flurry of blows. Compared to classic heavyweight matches of the past, it wasn't much of a fight, but as an example of the tactical side of the sport, Lister's "outwitting each other in a ring of combat", it was absolutely superb. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: Chemical Brothers, "Block Rockin' Beats" Tags: boxing, red dwarf, sport, tactics (Leave a comment)
01:04 am stillsostrange [Link]	This subject line was eaten by a grue. The Bone Palace 84023 / 100000 words. 84% done! The winner of the costume/story contest is desperance, since I used a good chunk of his idea. My version--as well as an excellent example of how I avoid naming things as long as possible--goes like this. In Selafai, brides wore red--the color of life and life's blood, virgin's blood, the blood of childbed, blood comingled in children. A color of fertility and fruitful unions. Veils had mostly gone out of fashion, and those who wore them still usually chose gold or silver, or more crimson if their complexions could stand it. Black veils had been made famous decades earlier by the playwright Kharybdea, who chose the color for X in the tragedy Y, the priestess who was broke her vows for love of Z, only to be betrayed and abandoned on their wedding night, after he had stolen her temple's greatest treasure. She killed herself on her saint's altar, and haunted Z in revenge, driving him to madness and finally death. It was probably the most relentlessly miserable story Savedra had ever seen on stage. It took a woman of morbid or vicious humor to dress as X for a masque; that three had done so tonight would surely be called an ill omen. Now if someone wants to name X, Y, and Z, I'll be all set. I've had anxiety dreams the past two nights. First I was trying to find a dress in a store full of hundreds of gorgeous dresses, but none of them fit, and the store was about to close, and my friends had already bought theirs. Then last night assassins broke into my apartment and I had to fight them off with a kitchen knife, then was stuck in the apartment with their not-quite-dead bodies waiting for help to arrive. (I got in a surprising amount of violence, since my dreams are the slow-running, crawling-through-peanut-butter kind, with any physical action muted and completely non-tactile.) Yes, subconscious, I know we have a deadline. Anxiety dreams won't make it any better. Current Mood: exhausted Current Music: Dragon Age Tags: dream theatre, the bone palace, writing (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
12:43 am james_nicoll [Link]	Am I right in thinking Dian Girard = Dian Crayne = J. D. Crayne? [clickity click] I think that's a yes. (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
09:46 pm rawdon [Link]	Torchwood Season One It took a while, but we recently finished the first season of Torchwood, the Doctor Who spin-off about a team in Cardiff, England defending the planet against alien incursions, and featuring Captain Jack Harkness, the occasional guest-star of Who. As I’ve done with Who, I’ll list the first season episodes in order of most to least favorite, and as usual my comments below will contain spoilers. Captain Jack Harkness (written by Catherine Tregenna) Ghost Machine (Helen Raynor) Out of Time (Catherine Tregenna) They Keep Killing Suzie (Paul Tomalin & Dan McCulloch) End of Days (Chris Chibnall) Countrycide (Chris Chibnall) Random Shoes (Jacquetta May) Greeks Bearing Gifts (Toby Whithouse) Combat (Noel Clarke) Everything Changes (Russell T. Davies) Small Worlds (Peter J. Hammond) Cyberwoman (Chris Chibnall) Day One (Chris Chibnall) A friend of mine said on Facebook that you have to look at Torchwood as a guilty pleasure. That would be fine – since much of this season is very poorly written – except that I already tend to see Doctor Who as a guilty pleasure, and Torchwood is a big step down from it, so where does that leave it? The most frustrating thing about the show is that the Torchwood team are mostly incompetent, which is a big change from most shows of this type where the government organization protecting us from the unknown is instead highly competent. But this isn’t really a theme of the show, it’s just a lever used for the stories: The characters are incompetent, so they do stupid things, and that results in problems. So, for example, in “Cyberwoman”, Ianto has been hiding his half-cyberized girlfriend in the basement of Torchwood since the Battle of Canary Wharf back in Doctor Who season three. He doesn’t really have a plan to reverse her condition, and he certainly doesn’t trust that his co-workers would help him. Naturally it all goes disastrously wrong once she gets loose. Or the first episode, “Everything Changes”, when the characters are making selfish use of the alien artifacts that Torchwood has access to even though Captain Jack’s told them not to. All this would make more sense if the team were more of a research organization, but that’s not really what they do, and it’s certainly not what they’re set up to do. This pattern continues through the season finale, “End of Days”, when the whole team turns against Jack to do something remarkably stupid which puts the whole world at risk. I can’t count the number of times I said, “Maybe next time you’ll listen to Jack!” at the television during the season. Not that Jack is a whole lot better, since he’s written very erratically. He’s certainly the most competent character in the group (although Tosh is okay; she’s a fair sight better than Gwen, Ianto and Owen), but he also swerves from being empathetic to being very callous and uncompromising. It’s like the writers couldn’t decide if they wanted him to be a tough-as-nails leader, or more of a heroic figure like the Doctor. The season’s rocky start has one good episode, “Ghost Machine”, and a decent one, “Countrycide”. The former is an atmospheric story about a device that can show echoes of the past, while the latter is a creepy horror story whose punchline is very different from what you’d expect. But neither of these are episodes to build a season on; in a better show, they’d be meat-and-potatoes episodes rather than the standouts. And they’re amidst dumb episodes like “Cyberwoman” or the immeasurably stupid “Day One” with its sex-obsessed alien killer (gah!), or the faerie-inspired but muddily-plotted “Small Worlds”. The series does get better as it goes on, though. “They Keep Killing Suzie” features the forgotten Torchwood member from the first episode coming back to cause trouble, a well-constructed episode that unfortunately peters out with a pointless chase sequence at the end. “Out of Time” involves some people from 1953 brought forward to the present and having to adjust to a very different era. It’s one of the more thoughtful episodes in dealing with this premise seriously. And the best episode of the season is “Captain Jack Harkness”, in which Jack and Tosh are thrown back to 1941 during the dawn of World War II and have to figure out how to get back even as Tosh is the subject of anti-Japanese sentiment. They also meet, well, Captain Jack Harkness of that era, who’s not at all what they were expecting. That episode sets up the last episode, “End of Days”, in which the mysterious goings-on turn a promising set-up into the team turning against Jack pointlessly and resolving into another stupid monster story. It’s a bombastic story but it’s frustrating and not very satisfying. And it ends with Jack disappearing to adventure with the Doctor at the end of his third season, which makes the series feel even more like a spin-off which is subordinate to its original series. Torchwood has all the ingredients to be a solid series, perhaps a little derivative of The X-Files, but with a flaboyant, unusual star character, an inventive visual look to the team’s headerquarters, and an unusual pedigree. But the writing just doesn’t follow through on the series’ premise, and rarely delivers stories that either make much sense on their own terms, or involve characters doing things that seem sensical. Overall, it’s mediocre, and never truly great. (Crossposted from Fascination Place) (Leave a comment)
02:46 am captainlucy [Link]	To those who gave all... everywhere... They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: Reap The Wild Wind (Leave a comment)
02:01 am sbisson [Link]	From Twitter 11-07-2009 ( Microblogged today ) Tweets copied by twittinesis.com (Leave a comment)
November 7th, 2009
08:49 pm james_nicoll [Link]	Not a question I expected to run across on Amazon Are forum Darwinists really just a branch of ACORN? Tags: memetic prophylactic recommended (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
08:15 pm fledgist [Link]	Militancy ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) Tags: not bad (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
07:52 pm time_shark [Link]	pictures from an autumn evening Scroll over the pictures for (non)info. ( (Placed behind a cut due to cuteness overload.) ) (13 comments \| Leave a comment)
11:55 pm muninnhuginn [Link]	Tweety ( (t)witterings ) (Leave a comment)
06:19 pm rolanni [Link]	And so it begins, again I need me a Ghost Ship icon. We have reports that Fledgling is landing in the UK and in Australia. We do have a couple more Found Souls to get back into the mail, but for most intents and purposes, all of the subscriber books have been mailed. Remember! In the US, they are traveling by Media Mail, which may take up to 21 days to reach its intended destination. The snow has been melting steadily all day, though it's not all gone, yet. A warm, sunny day tomorrow should take care of the rest. We have nailed down and passed on our itinerary for travel to Oasis 33 in May. We'll be staying over a couple days after the con to do what promotion we may, and also to be tourists on a very minor scale. We may have to have a bake sale in order to support this adventure. Stay tuned. Most of today was spent right here at the dining room table. As soon as I finish this blog entry, I am going to rise from my chair and go into the kitchen to do the dishes. And that will be the sum of my labors for the day. What did y'all do that was fun and exciting -- or, failing that, useful or profitable? Progress on Ghost Ship 2961 / 100000 Her working theory that Val Con was six whiskers short of a kitten had been shaken by the fact that someone she knew to be solidly sensible -- in particular, their shared father, even now escorting her to her ship -- seemed to accept this plan as a pattern-card of conservative action. Current Location: the dining room table Current Mood: creative Tags: ghost ship (12 comments \| Leave a comment)

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