Bookmarks for September 27, 2012
- Monty’s World – Mapping the life and work of M.R. James
Oooh, this is nice.
- iOS 6 ad-tracking opt-out | jwz
Two useful (and rather buried, tsk) advertising/tracking opt-outs for iOS 6.
Tag: fiction
Bookmarks for February 20, 2012
- Reading A Book More Than Once Has Mental Health Benefits | The Mary Sue
- Introducing Playfic – Waxy.org
One for the "when I've got some spare time" file. If it really is as easy to generate interactive fiction as the example here makes it look, then I might take a serious stab at it one of these days.
- Why Mass Effect is the Most Important Science Fiction Universe of Our Generation | Pop Bioethics
So anyone that's spoken to me in the last couple of weeks knows I'm a bit obsessed with Mass Effect. This article does a really good job or articulating a lot of the reasons why. It does contain (generally broad picture) spoilers (with one or two specifics), so if you haven't played them, and think you might yet do so, you should avoid it until you have. But if you have played it, or aren't planning to, and are at all interested in SF, or in issues regarding representation of minorities in media, or in the potential of games as storytelling media, then I recommend reading this.
Bookmarks for January 4, 2012
- Dirty 30s! – The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot
Lester Dent sold a lot of books in his day. Writing a series of modern day stories that ultimately follow this formula might be fun. 10 or 12 would make a nicely publishable volume, too.
- Paypal orders destruction of antique violin
I'm not sure what to say. This feels very like something that ought to be a crime – the seller had an authenticated antique violin, worth $2,500, and sold it. The buyer disputed the purchase. Paypal required proof of destruction before they would refund money. Buyer destroys antique, seller is now out both an antique violin *and* the money. Surely Paypal could be held to be complicit in a theft, here?
Bookmarks for October 29, 2010
- No terror arrests in 100,000 police counter-terror searches, figures show | Law | guardian.co.uk
I think the most surprising thing about this story is this quote: "A policy which fuels resentment and antagonism amongst minority communities without achieving a single terrorist conviction serves only to help our enemies and increase the terrorism threat." And the reason it's surprising it that it's coming from a Conservative MP. (Although I it is David Davis, who I confess to a grudging admiration for on the subject of civil liberties.)
- Del's plain english guide
Yes. More of this sort of thing, please.
- WGGB – News – PLR agency written off
Here's one of the governments cuts that won't make headline news, that won't get any of the usual arts bodies fighting against it, because it's not music or theatre or public art or any of the other stuff luvvies and lefties get up in arms about. And honestly, it probably won't change most' people's lives, but realistically also won't save any serious money. It's a cut for the sake of making a cut, an idealogical statement. And that statement is, broadly "fuck writers".
- budgie's squawks – The Fast Fiction Challenge 2010: The final list
Budgie has managed to write 150 ultra-short stories in 150 days. If you think that consistently writing 200 words a day isn't a remarkable feat, then I suggest that you try it. Every day, for almost half a year, you sit down in front of a blank piece of paper, and force yourself to have a good idea. No excuse for illness, no excuses for just "being busy with other things". 150 days, having a new idea every day, and executing that idea to a high standard, without fail. Yeah. My hat's off to you, squire. 200 days next year, year?
Bookmarks for September 21, 2010
- Politics of storytelling – Laurie Penny interviews China Mieville
This is food for thought. Key quote: "Storytelling is clearly an extremely important function of societies, but it's nonetheless unproven that to be human is to be a storytelling being. Even if it is the case that human beings are completely intrinsically storytelling animals, it doesn't follow that that's something to celebrate, any more than we should celebrate the fact that human beings are defecating animals."
There're a number of obvious counter-arguments, that can essentially be lumped in as "the power of art to bring about change" but it's still a point of view worth remembering.
- I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat (but farm it right) | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian
I think I'm going to have to pick this book up. A lot of the numbers around the environmental impact of livestock farming have seemed off to me particularly in relation to arguments about grain (because, well, what's wrong with grass-fed?) and water (because invariably, the numbers seem to assume that any water fed to a cow never leaves the cow, which is pretty self-evidently wrong). It's nice to see that someone's actually taken the numbers apart and proved them wrong/fallacious, and done so in a way that convinces even a big hippy like Monbiot.
- Alex Payne — The Very Last Thing I'll Write About Twitter
A clear and sensible statement about the need to decentralise services like Twitter, Facebook, and really, almost any service, if you want it around for the long (decade+) haul. Idle thought: Someday, someone will figure out how to massively decentralise search, and than things will get really interesting. (Google have, of course, effectively done this internally in that their search architecture is spread over cluster after cluster, but that's not the same as true decentralisation…)
- Diaspora Developer Release
I really want this to succeed – once it's out of beta, and at the more-or-less easy to install stage, I'll probably put some time and cash, into setting up a Seed. I absolutely know that there are people I've lost touch with since leaving Facebook, and I know my social life has suffered for it. I've felt quite disconnected from many of my friends this year, and it's bugging me quite a lot of late. I'm not blaming anyone, you understand and I'm not going to be one of those arseholes who think that it's everyone else's fault – I knew what I was doing when I walked away from Farcebook – I'm just a little sad that people don't seem to use any other contact medium any more. So as soon as I can, I'll help offer a better alternative…
Bookmarks for January 28, 2009
- Immortal jellyfish swarming across the world
"Stars nearly aligned" says Professor Angell. On the other hand, maybe this will finally give us a leg up all becoming young and thin and energetic again. Or turn us into a race of degenerate fish-men, I guess. Either's good by me. Ia! Etc…
- Everything you know about ARGs is WRONG
Ding! Correct! This, right here, is why I have never played an ARG. And why I would love to get paid to write one.
- alexyoung's ico
Former colleague's JS graph library. Looks handy.
- Switching from scripting languages to Objective C and iPhone: useful libraries :: Hackdiary
About to start an Objective C/Cocoa spare time project. Don't know if I'll need any of these tools, but it can't hurt to have a reference to find them.
Bookmarks for July 29, 2008
- Charlie’s Diary: Bechdel’s Law
Charlie Stross on a really good, simple baseline rule on deciding if a work fails a basic gender-equality test. There might be the odd work that gets exempted from it, but the number of works of popular entertainment that fail it is disturbing.
Bookmarks for March 10, 2008
- Google Contacts API
A safer means of allowing websites to access your contacts/addressbook data without having to give them your gmail password. Not that I know anyone who’d be stupid enough to do that, right?
- 3753 Cruithne – Wikipedia
Wikipedia article on “Earth’s second moon”. I was dimly aware that earth had more than one satellite, but this is so much cooler than I had first thought when I heard about it…
- @ETech: Matt Webb’s Tour of a Fictional Solar System
I love his perspective on the world, and really, really must get to a talk by him at some point.
- File this one under holy crap! It starts with (kottke.org)
OK, you can’t draw an exact cause-and-effect line, but that line to a history of “Hallelujah” that I posted the other week did the rounds (I think I got it off Waxy), and suddenly, Jeff Buckley’s version of the song is the top selling track on iTunes.
- ‘I fell in love with a female assassin’
An astonishing account of a photojournalist that did, well, exactly what he says, while covering a story in Colombia. Utterly compelling and thought provoking.
- Photon – High performance Mac OS photo browser, sorter and viewer
I love Lightroom for working on images and library mangement, but it doesn’t half take ages to impport stuff. If I can use this for a first-pass step, it might be quicker…
- Curvy Cross Processing in Photoshop CS3 | Layers Magazine
I suspect this will also work in Lightroom, which is handy, because the current cross-processing filter I have in LR is for shit, so instead, I shall build my own.
Bookmarks for February 20, 2008
- Black Ink
My writing site has finally been given the wash and a brush up it’s needed for years, and for the first time in ages I’m happy with it. It’s only a modified off the shelf job, but I like how it looks.
Books! Old and new!
cairmen asked, I answer:
1) Total number of books owned?
Dunno. If we allow comics-with-spines as books, 3 full-height bookshelves worth, plus more in storage. Without that, 2 full height bookshelves, plus storage. What’s in storage is probably another full-height and a bit of proper books.
2) Last book I bought:
Like cairmen, Brookmyre’s new one. I don’t think it’s soulless, although it’s a bit Brookmyre by the numbers. Boiling a Frog remains his weakest as far as I’m concerned.
3) Last book I read:
Last one finished was “Rip it Up And Start Again”.
a) With Pictures?
Erm… Flight 2, or possibly Four Letter Words. There’re a few others I’ve bought, but not read – mostly Marvel and DC trades. Very little new that’s a “god, got to rush home and read this…”
b) Non-fiction?
Rip It Up is non-fiction. But for fiction, the last thing I read was re-reading Grant Morrison’s “Lovely Biscuits” and David Conway’s “Metal Sushi” on the tube last Saturday (I took quite a few tube journeys, and read fast). Then I went and fed myself brain-altering chemicals, and in hindsight, should not have been entirely surprised…
4) 5 Books that mean a lot to me:
- 45 – Bill Drummond. Bill Drummond has the most relaxing and accessible way of talking about Art and modern life that I know. More books about Art should be like his. A friend of mine once flattered me outrageously by comparing my writing style/way of looking at the world and Drummond’s. I think he’s mad, but yes, Drummond is certainly an important influence of mine.
- The Complete Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle. My favourite pulp fiction, the light by which I make a basic judgement about almost all Fantasy/SF/Comics work – do I enjoy it as much as Holmes?
- Fear and Loathing On The Campaign Trail ’72 – Hunter S Thompson. My favourite work of journalism, and also my favourite work about politics.
- Winnie The Pooh (and The House at Pooh Corner) – A A Milne. Technically two books, I suppose, but I love them beyond belief. The only “classic” on my list. Brilliant, brilliant children’s fiction, and the standard by which a person’s soul can be measured. If there is no love in you for these stories then, you should be kept away from real people, as you’re obviously some kind of parasite.
- From Hell – Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. Not, I should add, on here as a token representative of comics, but on here as a thing I genuinely think of as an Important Literary Work. Yes, it still is the bar that I think other comics have yet to beat in terms of all round quality, but more than that, it’s an excellent work of literary/historical fiction, that doesn’t put a foot wrong at any point. A must-read for anyone, regardless of their prejudices about comics.