Saturday, July 28, 2001

Clarion West's instructors for next year have been announced: Kathleen Alcala, Pat Cadigan, Gardner Dozois, Nicola Griffith, Joe Haldeman, and Dan Simmons. Most I've at least read, some I've read great heaps of and admire a lot. We'll see what Clarion East announces, but this looks promising. I'm leaning towards West (in Seattle) if nothing else because I can better tolerate the climate; East (in East Lansing, Michigan) is too much like here in the summer, where heat makes me stupid. Might not write as well under such circumstances. Not that I'd be able to tell, given the non-existence of any literary output from me since I was old enough to recognize dreck when I wrote it.
posted by Jonathan Crowe 7/28/2001 11:05:34 PM | link

Lately I've been reading, and learning how to make, e-books. I downloaded a few free stories from Fictionwise yesterday, to try the service out. Stories can be downloaded in multiple formats, so I tried Palm docs and Microsoft Reader.

Docs don't appear to be able to handle any formatting; I wish Fictionwise would use Palm Reader format instead. Palm Reader is a nice piece of work. I don't mind reading on it at all, and it will read doc files, too. WordSmith can also handle doc files, but its anti-aliasing doesn't do any good unless you represent plain fonts with something else (Arial or Times New Roman), and then the fonts are too large to be effective, so I ended up trying to read on Palm Reader instead. In the end I read the stories — which were excellent (Hugo-nominated stories from Analog) — on the desktop instead, using Microsoft Reader.

I hate to admit it, but Microsoft Reader is a very good bit of software — it's very readable, easy on the eyes, and I've found it very easy to make documents for it. But its digital rights management is the shits: for DRM-enabled files, you have to register with Microsoft Passport, you can't read it on a Pocket PC and you can only have it on two computers at once. (Yes, I can think of circumstances where that might be a limitation!) Which in my opinion cripples its functionality to the point where no one will want to use it. Protecting your copyright by making sure no one so much as wants to read your material — unwise when you're trying to support a new format. So I won't be buying any Reader files from Amazon (which are DRM-enabled) as a result. Even so, I like the platform. Hell of a lot easier to make e-books for it, too; doing it in Palm Reader format was possible but fiddlier, and had to be done by hand. Watch this site for the results.

posted by Jonathan Crowe 7/28/2001 10:28:01 PM | link

Friday, July 27, 2001

A snake update. Florence just got back from the vet. Peaches (a snow corn snake) is our Typhoid Mary. We thought he had suffered heat damage at his last home and as a result wasn't eating properly, had lost weight and needed extra TLC. Turns out he had Giardia — he's just loaded with it — and had passed it on to two other corn snakes with whom he had been cohabiting for a month or so. Those corns were in last week and have been Flagyled appropriately. Now it's Peaches's turn. Meanwhile, one of the baby garters had a roundworm removed; this is what happens on a fish and worm diet. And say hello to our newest arrival: a gravid northern ribbon snake someone caught a while back that has passed into our hands. She's shy and jumpy, as a ribbon snake should be.
posted by Jonathan Crowe 7/27/2001 11:04:18 PM | link

Just got off the phone with Sam, who informs me that "wet boy" actually refers to some gay leather bondage thing. Uh. That's, uh, not what I had in mind when I selected the site name — I strung a few words together in 1994 that seemed funny to me, and ran with it, creating a rather strange character by the name of Angus J. McWetboy — but be that as it may, we could be receiving some interesting e-mail, depending on how the search engines process this site . . .
posted by Jonathan Crowe 7/27/2001 10:30:37 PM | link

Florence got to go out and help Mike with his turtle research yesterday. She got to go outside and play and have fun and get outside the city. She was in a terrific mood when she finally got back. I hate her.
posted by Jonathan Crowe 7/27/2001 01:24:30 PM | link

Thursday, July 26, 2001

A strong cool wind dropped the apartment's temperature overnight. It also bounced a fan off a garter snake cage, breaking a lid. Fortunately, we had a spare. In spite of that interruption (at about 3:30 am), I slept well and woke up without much pain. In spite of the cooler temperatures, the apartment is nevertheless uninhabitable due to the construction outside, which is closer today than it was yesterday. But I expect it will be finished — or at least elsewhere — by tomorrow.
posted by Jonathan Crowe 7/26/2001 09:56:38 AM | link

If people on this continent are increasingly overweight, then it makes sense to increase the amount of physical education in school. (Apparently it's down to about an hour a week, which is a lot less than I remember.) But, as Daily Tubby columnist Donna Laframboise points out, "unless things have changed dramatically since I was a student, the only kids who will benefit are those least in danger of becoming couch potatoes in the first place." At least someone remembers what gym class was like: a caste system in which the strong and the adept thrived, and the awkward and slow were simply left behind.
posted by Jonathan Crowe 7/26/2001 09:50:14 AM | link

Wednesday, July 25, 2001

Chris Mooney, writing in Slate, can't stand Tolkien's poetry; it's "simply awful". He gives examples. That isn't hard. Granted, the poetry gets skipped over pretty fast when I'm reading The Lord of the Rings for the nth time, but I have two thoughts. One, how quantifiably bad is Tolkien's doggerel? Cheese poetry bad? Vogon bad? Two, rhyming couplets in English are one thing; how do you critique Elvish verse ("Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen, / yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!")? Read Mooney's longer article on Tolkien's reception by academe in The American Prospect. And go to the Lord of the Rings film site to watch the second teaser trailer. Hyperventilate and drool while you watch it; I do.
posted by Jonathan Crowe 7/25/2001 02:55:30 PM | link

Too much pain this morning; will have to call in sick at work and look after the parts of me that ache. Which at the moment appears to be most of me. It's always worst in the morning, so it should improve over the day. Right now, though, it feels particularly intense. The heat wave has broken — it's amazing how 29°C is so much more liveable than 33°C — so staying at home will not be too oppressive, or at least it wouldn't be were it not for the jackhammers pounding away (already!) outside.
posted by Jonathan Crowe 7/25/2001 07:44:11 AM | link

Tuesday, July 24, 2001

Sometimes I'll blather on about the different types of flash memory, and the eyes of the person I'm talking to start to glaze over. Wondering what the hell I'm talking about. Have a look at this article on Brighthand — typical Brighthand fare, picture-heavy and text-light (though not so egregiously as other articles) but as good an introduction to the differences between SD/MMC, Compact Flash, SmartMedia and Memory Stick as you're going to find.
posted by Jonathan Crowe 7/24/2001 06:33:35 PM | link

It's my opinion that heat makes you stupid, which is my way of explaining why I feel so zonked out during heat waves. What really annoys me, though, is the inability to feel comfortable at all times. I can dress for non-air-conditioned environments (and wear shorts like today, even at work, I'm such a rebel) and be comfortable outside, but freeze when in an air-conditioned setting, like my workplace. Or I can wear pants and drop dead of heatstroke at the doors to the office tower. As usual I can't win. So far today the haze and muck have kept the sun at bay; shorts were not strictly necessary this morning, and I'm cold at work. After work may be a different story, though.
posted by Jonathan Crowe 7/24/2001 12:22:57 PM | link

Monday, July 23, 2001

Another bloody hot day. Typically for Ottawa, the two mid-afternoon thundershowers did absolutely nothing to abate the heat. Reached 33°C inside the apartment. We've prepared ice cubes to throw into the snakes' water dishes if it gets any worse . . .
posted by Jonathan Crowe 7/23/2001 11:38:04 PM | link

It's Florence's first day of work at the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation — they've hired her as a part-time translator, an arrangement that suits both parties just fine.
posted by Jonathan Crowe 7/23/2001 09:13:59 AM | link

Busy doing, not much time for writing. Yesterday afternoon, Kim Heaphy came over to tour our snake collection and inspect the hatchling corn snakes, one of which she wanted to buy. Then off down the street to a nice Vietnamese restaurant for dinner with friends; Kim is in Ottawa for the week. Talking shop, of course — what you'd expect from a bunch of reptile hobbyists. I came home and went to bed early while the rest of them went for a walk to work off the powerful Vietnamese coffee they'd had. (I wonder if any of them slept.)
posted by Jonathan Crowe 7/23/2001 09:12:18 AM | link

Sunday, July 22, 2001

Florence and I went to the Fête gourmande last night with Donna and John. Food mostly deep-fried or otherwise instant, entertainment often very good. Good to be outdoors in the evening, when the temperature outside was better than it usually is inside the apartment, and the sun isn't oppressive.
posted by Jonathan Crowe 7/22/2001 07:40:10 AM | link