Posted onBlahg

I am Exposition Man today

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I start­ed by flesh­ing out some of what I’d already writ­ten, pro­vid­ing some more detail in the con­ver­sa­tion that ends the first chap­ter. I’ve also decid­ed to upgrade a minor char­ac­ter; he may still be a minor char­ac­ter, but I’ve decid­ed against dis­card­ing him. He’ll appear again.

That flesh­ing-out progress is the sort of thing I’m prob­a­bly not «sup­posed» to do dur­ing NaNoW­riMo. The plan is to get the words out there, fast and furi­ous, not spend a cou­ple of … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

2200 more words and failing the Bechdel test

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Day two of the NaNoW­riMo chal­lenge is done. It’s ear­ly enough that I might con­ceiv­ably go back to writ­ing but late enough that tak­ing a break now means I’m like­ly to be done for the day.

I fin­ished the first chap­ter of the nov­el. I’ve intro­duced one major char­ac­ter direct­ly and four oth­er major char­ac­ters in backstory/exposition. And I’ve start­ed anoth­er chap­ter, which intro­duces one more major char­ac­ter, though we haven’t real­ly got­ten to know any­thing about her yet. Today’s word … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

If I must fail I will do so in public

by 1 Comment on If I must fail I will do so in public

Today was the First of Novem­ber, and there­fore the first day of NaNoW­riMo or Nation­al Nov­el Writ­ing Month. The chal­lenge is to write a nov­el of at least 50,000 words entire­ly dur­ing the month of Novem­ber. It’s a some­what ambi­tious under­tak­ing and there­fore tempt­ing not to talk about it until it’s done for fear that I might announce the project and then not fol­low through.

But the flip side of that impulse is that not telling any­one what … Read the rest

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Posted onOpinionated Junk

Your sci-fi character name!

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Here’s a fun game you can play with all your friends. It’s your sci-fi movie char­ac­ter name! Here’s how it’s done:

Take your moth­er’s maid­en name. That’s your char­ac­ter’s first name. Then for the last name take your online bank­ing pass­word and stick the last four dig­its of your Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber on the end.

I am Tana­ka Sycamore7599!1

Was­n’t that fun?2

  1. Um, no, I’m not. Social media «games» in which you reveal per­son­al infor­ma­tion about your­self are
… Read the rest
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Posted onOpinionated Junk

Political discourse in three easy steps

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  1. See an arti­cle or video crit­i­cal of a polit­i­cal par­ty you dislike.
  2. Since you already dis­agree with that par­ty, any­thing neg­a­tive about them must be accu­rate. Fact-check­ing, research­ing of issues, or any oth­er form of ver­i­fi­ca­tion is not nec­es­sary.
  3. Repost to your favorite social media site(s) to be seen by all your friends.

BONUS Any­one who replies with infor­ma­tion which con­tra­dicts any part of your repost is a par­ti­san shill for the oth­er par­ty. Any­one who has done actu­al … Read the rest

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The pain in the rain lies mainly in the brain

Some peo­ple don’t believe it, but run­ning in the rain is a lot of fun. The rain is cool­ing, which feels good but also means there is less need to sweat to cool off. The fresh water from the sky helps wash away all the salt too, so it’s an all-around win. I had­n’t been for a rain run in quite some time — I don’t think I’ve ever done one since I moved to Alame­da. We had our first … Read the rest

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Once more, this time with air

This is the run I’d real­ly meant to run Sun­day. While this time I neglect­ed to put the inhaler in my pock­et, I did take a puff short­ly before head­ing out. It was a tremen­dous dif­fer­ence being able to breathe. I’m not in great shape and I have a long way to go. but more days like today I can take. Attempts like Sun­days, I just can’t.

Despite not get­ting far on Sun­day, my calves were still painful­ly tight today even … Read the rest

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There but for the grace of oxygen go I

It’s been a while since I logged any miles, so I think this has to be count­ed as a suc­cess, but one far short of what I’d hoped. The good news is that my heart and legs seem to be doing OK, at least so far as today was a test. The bad news is that I left my albuterol inhaler at home. I got about a mile out before I was wheez­ing so much I had to walk. I … Read the rest

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Posted onBlahg

Bitcoin: worth the electrons it’s printed on?

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I recall read­ing even before I had any inter­est in Bit­coin or Bit­coin min­ing that the cost of elec­tric­i­ty was prob­a­bly high­er than the yield one could get by min­ing. So I nev­er expect­ed to set up a min­ing oper­a­tion on my per­son­al com­put­er and get rich quick. I did what I rec­om­mend any­one do if they are inter­est­ed in get­ting to know how Bit­coin works: I set up a min­ing oper­a­tion to learn.

The online resources about Bit­coin are full … Read the rest

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