Friday Writing Update

I don't write every day. I mention that because it's one of the things they tell you to do. There are even motivational tools available to keep you writing every day. I've been feeling a bit funny about it this week, probably because I've only had three days where I did any writing work, and that was all reviewing and critiquing my book rather than writing anything new. I think it's been good so far, though at this rate it might take another six weeks or so to get through the whole thing. I should probably try to write something new along with my editing, and I should find some time to write on my weekends, too.

I've got some practice exercises I'd like to do this week, including one about showing, not telling, which is a problem I have. If I don't concentrate, I veer into exposition rather than action, dialogue or even environmental description. The other thing I'd like to try is to tell a story that's all dialogue, because that's something else I tend not to do. I describe conversations rather than writing them down. I just need to figure out what to write about for that one.

So that's it, really. This week has been all editing, and not enough of that.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Oh, and keeping up with Critters.org, too.
PPS - And counting down the days until my own submission comes up for critique.

Video games are sort of okay, we guess

Video games have gotten a better rap in recent years, but I don't think all forms are socially acceptable yet. Anyone who gets very serious about video games is going to be treated with pity or scorn, and if you're a man in your 30s who plays games, you're going to be ridiculed. If you play violent games, you will be treated with some measure of fear, and if you have a family and play any form of games, you will probably run into some disgust. This says to me that, although it is not seen as socially unacceptable to play games at all, it is still seen as an anti-social use of your time. It is something you may do, but it is not something that productive members of society do.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It's not at all like watching football, which is totally valuable, because of reasons.
PPS - Maybe in a few decades it will be more acceptable.

Reverse implications of first sale and digital goods

The doctrine of first sale, at least in US law and from my limited not-a-lawyer understanding, says that if you buy something, then you own it, and you may later sell it to a third party without the permission or consent of the copyright owner, the original seller or anyone else. So if I buy a book from a bookshop, then read it, I can later sell that copy at a garage sale at my house, lend it to a friend or give it away to charity, and the bookstore, the publisher and the author don't get any say in the matter, nor any cut of the sale price.

People argue for this right to apply to digital goods as well, such as music purchased from iTunes. A recent court decision, however, says that first sale does not apply to digital goods, only physical ones. There are two possible responses to that decision. One is to cry foul against the court, asserting that digital first sale is a right that should exist, since we are told that we have bought this music (or book or movie) and therefore we have the right to sell it to a third party, provided we do not retain a copy ourselves. The other option, and one that I find quite plausible, is to say that the "sale" of a digital good, if it cannot be resold at all by design or by nature, is nonsense. If I am not "buying" music from iTunes in the sense that I may resell it, then I shouldn't be charged that way for it, and iTunes needs to change to a different fee model. They need either to charge for music "rental", for limited-term access to music that goes away after a while, or for flat-fee unlimited access to the whole library (or by parts, such as decades or genres).

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If you can't resell it, you haven't bought it.
PPS - And if you haven't bought it, you shouldn't be charged as if you have.

That will take too long

"That takes too long" is a poor excuse. As Mur Lafferty said in one of her "I Should Be Writing" podcasts, that time is going to pass anyway, and what would you rather have at the end? You will either have accomplished something or you will have a lot of video game skills. Get started. Learn difficult things, make big things. Do something.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Very few things are actually too big to do.
PPS - Some are too big to do on your own, though.

Handling stress

I don't do well under pressure. Time constraints, budget constraints, difficult people and uncooperative technology all push my stress levels through the roof, and when those things are present, someone - a manager, in most cases - is there hovering over my shoulder making suggestions on how things could be done faster or better.

My main problem is that I am in an industry where these circumstances are run of the mill. High pressure, tight deadlines, no budget, screaming customers and exploding computers are considered normal job aspects. If you don't do well under pressure, software is not the industry for you. Worse, I think the entire world is becoming like this now. Even if I decide I've had enough of the software industry, there's no other profession that offers a low stress work environment. It's a standard job interview question: "how do you handle stress?", not because you will have some stressful days, but because handling stress is your job now. Keeping a fingernail grip on the edge of sanity is your only employable skill, and that's only because we already got rid of the guys who needed a whole fingertip grip.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In some cases, the actual job could be taught to anyone.
PPS - And I need to learn to handle stress better.

Friday writing update

I've been a bit slack this week. Normally, my morning commute is devoted to writing, and the only thing I've done is write a half-hearted flash fiction piece about a world of killer fungus spores and finish off my second novel in outline. I really lost energy for that one after November. The story stopped being about the things I thought it would be, and I wasn't that happy with the way it went. It took me 30 days to get 50,000 words, then the next five months to write the final 4000. The truth is, I've been much more interested in going back to my first novel, breaking it all down, figuring out what viewpoints I want to follow and giving it another go from the start. So that's what I'm going to do now, in between trying to get my flash fiction published.

About that, right now, before I've submitted anything (I'm waiting for workshop feedback, due in about two weeks, for one story) I have a weird kind of optimism. While I know that most wannabe authors would go their whole lives without getting anything published at all, I'm still excited in advance, because part of me figures I'll only have to submit a story to two, maybe three places before I can start bragging. The rest of me believes that my little inner optimist is in for a serious reality check. But that's not for two weeks or so.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Until then, I'm going to be re-reading my first novel and writing out a plot summary.
PPS - And character descriptions.

Google should make weather alerts

I have two active weather alert systems set up: one to tell me when it's raining and I should bring an umbrella, and another from the Early Warning Network to email me any official Severe Weather Warning alerts issued by the Bureau of Meteorology. This means I get two emails when it's going to rain severely, and also that those alerts look exactly like normal email. What I really need is a single app on my phone that can provide me custom alerts for ordinary or severe weather on my phone without looking just like email. I want to know when the BOM thinks it will rain and when it thinks the weather is so severe that nobody should go outside. I imagine little weather icons in my Android alerts bar.

Now, the EWN does supply an app for severe weather warnings, but that doesn't give ordinary rain warnings. There are plenty of weather widgets for Android, but these take up a lot of screen space and you have to remember to check them. And while there are plenty of weather apps available, it's not clear whether they work in my area. That's because weather forecasts are provided worldwide by lots of different agencies in lots of different formats and it takes some effort to sort them out. More effort than many companies would like to put in.

You know who is uniquely positioned to organise the world's weather information? Google. They could integrate it with Maps, gathering and publishing local weather forecasts from known sources and assembling them into a worldwide KML map file of current and predicted weather conditions, all available as an online API. Then the only thing left for the app to do is consult the API and present the information to users.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - If anyone knows of a good weather alert app that works in Australia, please let me know.
PPS - It has to alert on both severe weather and ordinary rain.

Computer security

Computer system security is a lot more complicated than giving everyone a username and password. In real systems, people play different roles (sometimes several per person) and each function of a system can only be performed by certain roles. That would be good if it were all, but it is also the case that a person can have a different role depending on the data context. In one project, a user might be the project owner, capable of taking any action, but in another project, they might only be responsible for a small area, or have read-only access for whatever reason. So every action needs to be checked for the right person in the right role in the right context.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - The point is that there are a thousand ways to do security wrong.
PPS - And only a few ways to do it right.